Category — Science (weird & less weird)

 This post was inspired by Jan at Thanksfor2day: I encourage you to check out this link and read  other contributors to the Garden Bloggers Sustainable Living project for great ideas on living a greener life. Every day is an Earth Day, but the official celebration comes up on April 22nd. It’s a good time to get even more ideas about how we can be a part of planet’s health.

I celebrated my first Earth Day by planting a tree. They were planning to pave part of my high school grounds for a parking lot. Some of us protested. The tree was my idea.

This Earth Day (April 22), I’m going to celebrate by planting a seed.

It may seem like a small thing to do, given the magnitude of the situation. Other posters in this Earth Day series have written about compost, conservation, and organic everything. All very valuable ideas, each of which has a body of literature to itself - and deserves it.

But there’s something a lot of gardeners (and would-be gardeners) don’t think about: where do the seeds come from? And what impact does that have on our environment?

I’m not talking about where the seeds are grown, though that’s certainly a consideration; organic seeds are becoming more and more available, and I sometimes pay the extra price for them so I can support organic seed growers. We all know that inorganic farming washes away irreplaceable topsoil, right?

The thing I’m talking about is what’s hidden inside the seed.

Most of the seed gardeners choose from is in one of these categories: open-pollinated, , F1 hybrids, and genetically engineered seed.

Open-pollinated seed is the kind gardeners and farmers have been using for millenia. The kind you can save and plant again next year, getting plants that are pretty close to what you had before.

Open-pollinated seeds can’t be patented; no one owns them. Heirloom seeds,  like the ones from Baker’s Creek  and Renee’s Garden are open-pollinated. So are wild, medicinal, and traditional garden plants, such as the ones in the JL Hudson catalogue  (which also carries heirloom ornamentals and edibles). (By the way, I don’t have a financial deal with these companies; I just think they’re good companies.)

Open-pollinated seed doesn’t just carry on ancient traditions: it’s also what keeps diversity alive. It’s bees, moths, and birds (and the occasional rodent) who do the pollinating, and they don’t have any agendas about making money off the results; they just want immediate gratification. Which means that open-pollinated seeds may sprout in any of a number of combinations of DNA, giving rise to different colors, sizes,  bloom and harvest times, and other variations.

That means if conditions change, the seed has the potential to change with them. So if rainfall levels, climate, water availability or soil changes, open-pollinated seeds have more ability to adapt. And open-pollinated seeds which are saved for enough generations will develop characteristics that make them grow better in your particular plot of soil and climate.

So why would anyone want to plant anything else?

Well, people who want very predictable results when they plant their seeds. Which would be the farmers who raise our food. The big seed companies breed F1 hybrids, to produce the crop uniformity that makes machine-harvesting easier. If you re-use F1 hybrid seed you will get a strange, straggly assortment of plants which may or may not bear resemblance to the plant’s parents. F1 hybrids aren’t designed to reproduce themselves. They’re designed to get you to buy seed from the companies every year.

In the garden, F1 seed provides the same uniformity and vigor. Your petunias may flower more, and longer; your tomatoes will all come in at the same time, and have the same appearance.

I’m not a purist; I’ve bought F1 seed because I’m intrigued by a variety. But mostly, I stick to the old-fashioned kind of seed: open-pollinated.

One kind of seed I won’t knowingly buy, or eat, or use is genetically-engineered seed. Unlike F1 hybrids, genetically-engineered seeds are altered at the level of their DNA.  That means they can be crossed with plants which would never cross with them in nature, as well as with animal DNA and bacteria. Creating, for example, a potato that is properly classified as a pesticide. “The [New Leaf] potato was designated as a pesticide and so was regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), instead of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) which regulates food,” I read at Sustainable Table. Yes, truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Here’s something even stranger: if the GM companies have their way (and right now it looks as if they’re getting it), we may not be able to save our seed any longer.

One farmer who tried to save seed was famously sued for it. Percy Schmeiser,  in Saskatchewan. A seed breeder, he planted his fields with his specialized canola seed. But some genetically-engineered Roundup Ready Monsanto seed drifted in from other fields, contaminating his crop.

Not only did Monsanto not pay him for destroying forty years of breeding work - they sued him. Whether or not he had benefited from the Roundup Ready seed (he certainly hadn’t), Monsanto claimed he owed them money for having their patented crop in his field.

Schmeiser decided to fight back, a small but determined Canadian David against a large corporate Goliath. He toured the country, telling his story, and raising money for his defense.

The Canadian Supreme Court sided with Monsanto. When Schmeiser appealed, the court allowed as how he didn’t have to pay Monsanto - but the other aspects of his appeal were denied. That means that a precedent has been set: it’s OK for gigantic genetic-engineering companies to take over farmer’s fields without their consent. And it’s all right for genetically-engineered seed to wipe out seed that has been carefully bred for generations - seed that has the diversity to adapt to future conditions.

The reverberations may be world-wide: genetically-engineered seed is being forced on many countries in the form of foreign aid, as hybrid seed was before it. If farmers won’t plant this type of seed, they don’t get any of the other foreign-aid benefits: schools, wells, economic projects. But the seed they are given won’t grow without the water and equipment that US farmers use for their crops. And farmers in poor countries just don’t have those. They don’t even have the gasoline to run equipment if they are given it, not just because they don’t have the money, but because they have no transportation to a place where they could buy it. If I were a farmer in that position, I would learn to hate the country that put me into it.

Nobody knows what effects long-term consumption of GM seeds and foods will have. The EU has outlawed them for that reason. And no one knows what future conditions will call for the diversity only open pollination can provide. So when you choose your seed this spring, you’re not making a small decision.

Everything starts with a seed.

As my geek complement to Daffodil Planter’s Daffodil Blogarama and the many other daffodil posts flashing yellow, pale pink, and white over the web, I’m offering a peek into the daffodil world of a hundred years ago.

Although maybe it’s not so geeky, since it’s mostly concentrated on sex. Daffodil sex, that is. Though a man of the cloth, the author of the “Daffodils” book in the British Present-Day Gardening series, Reverend Joseph Jacob,  has a passion for breeding. And, even more shockingly,  he thinks everyone should share it. “This fascinating pursuit, hobby, or business, to give it names which are appropriate to the different ends in view, is one which I advise every Daffodil cultivator to take up; whether it be for pleasure or with a view to business it is equally alluring and interesting.” (pg. 39) He talks of going from town to town in England, lecturing at daffodil societies, and how the members hung on his lips, asking questions about do-it-yourself breeding.

I wonder if the national convention of the American Daffodil Society will have any similar seminars? These days, we think of daffodil breeding as something only specialists can do, with special equipment and large fields and greenhouses. But, Jacobs says,  all we really need are labels and notebooks, plus little boxes for storing and carrying pollen (it’s viable for about two weeks, if you keep it dry and clean in a loosely covered box) and a camel’s hair brush, gently moistened in the mouth so the pollen will stick to it.

‘Minnow’, a miniature unavailable in Jacob’s time

That’s all the physical equipment that’s required. The rest of it lies in knowledge, and patience.

One of the bits of knowledge we need to try our hand at our own hybrids is knowing when the time is ripe for sex. “…the best time for cross-fertilisation is between 10 A.M and 4 P.M….that in cold and sunless weather the operations should be repeated more than once…that the pollen brushes must be kept very clean, and all the pollen of one variety carefully removed before the same brush is used for any other variety; that it is not found necessary in practice to cover the fertilised bloom in any way with glass or muslin; and that, the seed-bearer should be growing in a  good open position.” (pg. 44-45)

But the deeper knowledge that’s required, the one all those daffodil societies were swarming around Jacob hoping to get, is the knowledge of family background. Some daffodils are good pollinators, some are not.  Since most of the daffodils of a hundred years ago are lost or obscure, I’m going to save his complete lists for the very end of this post, in the hope that some of you have grown the ones I don’t know about, or will be able to point out sources for them.

From his list of “Potent Pollen-Parents” (I told you it was about sex), only  a few remain that are available today: all the poet varieties, W.P. Milner,  and King Alfred. (King Alfred, as I’ve explained before,   is an antique daffodil that’s actually hard to find. If you read the fine type, you will see that below most ‘King Alfred’ blurbs is “King Alfred type”, which basically means any yellow trumpet daffodil that looks more or less like King Alfred and is cheap in production. They may not have the same pollen potency as their predecessor.)

King Alfred is also on the list of “Good Seed-Bearers”, as are most of the poet varieties. Golden Spur, another good seeder, is available through Old House Gardens, as is Lily Langtry. (I’ve grown Golden Spur, a simple yellow trumpet that makes the modern ones look a bit as if they’re on steroids; I have yet to make the acquaintance of the divine Mrs. Langtry.)

Of the “Shy Seeders” I recognize only Maximus (also available at OHG) and Empress, a daffodil I have admired but never bought due to price (I save my most extravagant bulb purchases for tulips, it seems. I might as well admit my prejudice; I have favorite children in the garden).

Amateur breeders today may have a harder time finding this kind of information, as breeding has become something specialized and hard in our minds. It’s making me wonder if a little diligent research among breeders might be a good idea.

But research won’t give me the final attribute I need for breeding: patience. “The one great drawback that can be urged against [breeding] is the time that must necessarily elapse between the seed-sowing and the harvest. From four to six or seven years is a long time to wait for results, but, as the oft-repeated quotation from old Philip Miller (1733) says, ‘After the first five years are past, if there be seeds sown every year, there will be annually a succession of flowers to show themselves; so that there will be a continual expectation, which will take off the tediousness which, during the first five years, might be very troublesome to some persons…’ ” (pg. 39-40)

Is it any wonder that I love old garden books? Where in modern literature would we find someone urging us, urging anyone, to go out in the garden with a camel’s hair brush and start our own hybrids?  Even if it takes seven years. And why not follow these old urgings? Many things have changed in the last hundred years, but, as a look at the emerging spring around us will show, sex still goes on in the same old way.

‘Colleen Bawn’ - an antique now, but still in the future in Jacob’s day

Reverend Joseph Jacob’s Lists of Breeding Daffodils

(I don’t know what the ordering system for these lists is; clearly, not alphabetical. Maybe order of bloom time?)

List of Thirty Good Seed-Bearers:

Duke of Bedford

Lady Margaret Boscawen

Minnie Hume

King Alfred

Mrs. R. Sydenham

Madame de Graaff

Weardale Perfection

Firebrand

Judge Bird

W.B. Hartland

Oriflamme

Most of the Poet varieties

Emperor

Henry Irving

Golden Spur

Pallidus Praecox

P.R. Barr

Eyebright

Glory of Nordwijk

Bernardino

Acme

Golden Bell

Alert

Mrs. Walter Ware

Princess Mary

Mrs. Langtry

Albicans

Evangeline

Lord Muncaster

Decora

List of Shy Seeders

Empress

Horsfieldii

Glory of Leiden

Homespun

Maximus

Sir Watkin

Gloria Mundi

Flora Wilson

Crown Prince

Duchess of Westminster

Autocrat

Potent Pollen-Parents

King Alfred

Maximus

Eyebright

Emperor

Weardale Perfection

Circlet

Madame de Graaff

W.P. Milner

All the Poet varieties

Lulworth

Castile

Poetarum (for its colour)

Have you ever wondered how that morning glory vine knew how to find a support and twine around it? Or, for that matter, how roots know to grow down and stems know to grow up? And while we all know that plants follow light – how exactly do they do that?

For those of us who enjoy our geekery, it’s fun finding out more about these things. But even if you’re not a geek, knowing how your plants move adds a dimension to gardening, and might help you garden better, too. And just about everyone loves watching time-lapse photography movies, which are the core of this post. You can watch plants dance.

The forces that move plants really are beyond our ken. Well, the forces of nature are pretty much beyond our ken (especially our own natures). But humans do like to watch and name things. Science (one of the big areas for watching and naming, but not the only one) – science has a name for the ways plants move: tropisms.

There are different kinds of tropisms, but I think it would be much more fun for you to watch them than for me to tell you about them. This Indiana University site has several very short movies – each of them less than a minute. You can watch corn sprouts bend down, worshipping light in a ceremonial circle, or corn roots that know which way is down, even when they’re turned on their sides. Arabidopsis and tomato sprouts gracefully quirk into arabesques toward different kinds of light. Take five minutes at the Plants in Motion website; it’s better than a coffee break for a rush of energy.

Morning glory flowers lean into the sun: phototropism

My favorite movements are what this site calls nastic movements, movements plants make which aren’t necessarily in the direction of the stimulus (roots going down to ground, stems bending toward light). If  you go to this page of the site, you can watch a morning glory vine wave around, find a support, and twine around it.

Of course since it’s human beings making the categories here, there’s some argument about whether this is a nastic movement – those are the movements that don’t go toward (or away from) the stimulus. Some people call this dance of the morning glories thigmatropism – which means that when the reaching plant hits a solid object, it starts twining (or in the case of plants with suction cups, like ivy, sticking).

If you like intimations of horror without the gore, there’s an episode of a venus fly trap closing (a nursery manager once taught me how to stimulate the center, not the edges, of their traps. And using a bigger instrument (such as your finger) will get you better results than the little metal tool in this movie).

To me, the most spectacular of these nastic movements are the young and old arabidopsis (what is arabidopsis?) plants. They wave, they bend, they whirl: what’s the force moving them? Their own plant cells, elongating more on one side than another. When you watch the 10-second movie, they look as if they are blowing in a high wind. But the wind is all inside them. Inside their secret lives.

No longer a Figwort

Like many families today, the Figworts have split up.  Even now, they are moving on to new families, acquiring new names.

It’s sad, but modern life is full of such scenes. What drove them apart? Taxonomy.

What does this mean to me? you may be wondering. Who gives a fig?

Well, if you’re a gardener, you’re probably living with a Figwort right now. Got any foxgloves? Snapdragons? Toadflax? Or if you don’t have those, you may have nemesia, penstemon, angelonia, or any of about 190 other genera from the family (in its heyday).

If you like to walk in the larger garden nature combines with humans to make, you’ll find more (former) Figworts: mimulus, Indian paintbrush, collinsia. Wetter areas than mine may harbor the wild Figworts foxglove (D. purpurea) and toadflax (Linaria vulgaris).

What does it mean to a gardener or just plain plant-fancier to know a plant family? In my own case, I’ve used the old, extended Figwort family as a sign of plants that are likely to do well, or at least OK, in semi-shade. Since semi-shade is mostly what I’ve got, this is important news.

Figworts, I’ve discovered – at least the clan of ancient days – seem to be a little less tasty to deer than other flowering plants. You notice I didn’t say Figworts are deer-proof (that would be asking for it). No plant is deer-proof. Figworts (or Scrophulariaceae in the old-school sense) might qualify as fairly deer-resistant, though.

I can still use these old designations for practical purposes, but here, as so often, the dread Lumpers and Splitters have come into the garden, wreaking as much havoc as deer. DNA sequencing shows that the Figworts must be in five separate groups, some of them entirely new groups made for the occasion, like children of a second marriage assigned a name they’ve never known. Even these five groups leave the mimulus on the outskirts : mimulus is still unclassified. And to make the splitup even more fraught, Lumpers and Splitters have been tussling over the genus Mimulus for years. Some say that the shrubby ones should be called Diplacus, and the herby ones Mimulus. (For more about this epic struggle, check out this post.)

When botanists create new orders (so to speak), gardeners (conservatives of the botanical world) often stubbornly hold on to the old ones. The gardeners have a point: there were reasons why these plants were bound together under one roof. They have similarities that help us to identify them, know some of their properties, and have a good idea where they like to grow.

The botanists have a point, too. If these plants are different down to their DNA, it makes sense to me that there would be distinctions in their personalities and properties – how could there not be?

And what might that mean to gardeners?

You probably think I’m going to talk about your stress. Nope. I’m going to talk about plant stress. But you can extrapolate if you want: humans need a bit of stress, too, or we wouldn’t stand upright.

What seems to be important, in humans and in plants, is the right kind of stress. I’ve talked about bad kinds of stress, like what happens to plants that get watered, then  suffer from drought.

How do we create good plant stress?

Squeeze your grapes. Wine grapes, that is. But you’ve got to do it right. Mark and Rie Ishii Matthews, at the University of California, did a study on wine grapes that were stinted on water, making smaller, dryer grapes. These grapes made wine which was more aromatic and flavorful, and had a better appearance. The wine was worth more, too, which made the growers happy.

Whack off your vines.  Most vines put on a much better display if they’re severely pinched out or pruned early in life. Grapes would be only one example; most perennial flowering vines also benefit from being whacked. Instead of putting their energy into one long trailer, suddenly they have several branches, all potential rivers of flowers and fruit. Don’t forget that many tomatoes are vines, too. And some non-vine plants – such as chrysanthemums – also do well under this treatment.

Beat and shoot your trees. In the southeast U.S., farmers flail their pecan trees to make a better yield. This echos an old English custom, wassailing. On about the 17th of January (Twelfth Night on the old calendar, one of those post-winter-solstice holidays) farmers gather in the apple orchard with shotguns and other noisemakers. They pour libations of cider on the roots, and put cider-soaked pieces of toast in the branches. Sometimes a child is put in the branches of the chosen tree and fed some of the cider toast. Then guns are discharged through the branches, tin cans and trays are beaten, and a song is sung to the apple tree, encouraging it to bear.

There are records of similar rituals for other fruit-bearing trees, but for most of history, apple trees were the main source of alcohol, making them vitally important, and their rituals seem to have been more recorded. Some of the wassailing traditions include beating the trees, just like the southeastern pecan farmers.

Robert Stone’s 1989  book,  The Secret Life of Your Cells, got me thinking about this. Stone says that, in the grapes experiment, the researchers intended good when they turned off the water, and the plants sensed that. Having known scientific researchers, I think they were just as likely to be thinking about what they were having for lunch or if they could fit a trip to the gas station in before they got home, but OK. Let’s ride with this theory.

Certainly the farmers who beat their apple trees are looking to encourage, and not harm. Yet how many stories have we heard of plants who were threatened with death if they didn’t shape up – and they shaped up? How many of us have experienced plants thriving where they have no business to? A miniature citrus that thrives in a shady spot, but dies when moved to a sunny one; Ruth Stout’s gardenia, which flourished where it wasn’t supposed to.

Are these plants stressed, and liking it? Or are they just perverse? Is it the same thing?