USDA Hardiness Zone Map. Click on the image for an interactive version.
Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled a new plant hardiness map. The last one was released over two decades ago -- in 1990. Some of the changes reflect new methods for interpolating data between weather stations. But
Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map
have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree
Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the
United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a
longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at
weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the
1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of
1974-1986. (from the USDA announcement)
Plants know that the climate is changing. Minimum winter temperatures over most of the U.S. are 5 degrees warmer now than they were two decades ago. The earth is getting warmer, and this is just a little more evidence of that.
Protea obtusifolia in the De Hoop Nature Reserve, Western Cape, South Africa Photograph by Kent Holsinger Click on the image for a high-resolution image in a new window.
The Dimensions of Biodiversity project that Carl Schlichting, Cindi Jones, John Silander, Andrew Latimer, Justin Borevitz, and I are working on is featured in a recent Discovery article on the NSF website. Here are the first couple of paragraphs of the article:
Climate change is on your porch and in your backyard and living room--anywhere you bedeck with flowering plants.
Global warming affects favorite flowers of garden and vase. This is true of plants around the world, including the proteas and the pelargoniums native to South Africa.
Head over to the NSF site if you'd like to read the whole thing.
Mediterranean island lizards are important pollinators and seed dispersers, but adults also cannibalize eggs and young lizards.1 This video won the 2011 NESCent Film Festival.
OK. I admit it. I'm out of it. I know about (but don't enjoy) heavy metal, but I'd never heard about black metal until a graduate student mentioned it to me last week and sent along this link. Not only is there a genre of rock known as black metal,1 but Botanist is one of its practitioners. Not a botanist, though Botanist may be a botanist. Botanist is the artist's name.
I listened to a bit of A rose from the dead, and I can't claim to like it.2 I am pleased to see that in an artist takes botany seriously. The titles of his songs include "Convolvulus altheoides", "Quercus lamellosa", "Echinocereus", "Monstera's lair", "Sanguinaria", "Dodecatheon", "Asclepias currasavica", "Trillium recurvatum", "Cypripedium", and "Nephrolepsis". Botanist knows his plants. Here are the lyrics to "Nephrolepsis".
Nephrolepsis
Sword fern
Thriving in humid oppression
Lomariopsidaceae
Alternate pinnae leaflets
Deltoid fronds serrated edge
Damocles sword of green
Above your head doomlike dangles
Even if you don't care for black metal, you'll have to admit that's pretty impressive. When was the last time you heard "Lomariopsidaceae" or "deltoid fronds" in a rock song?
A year and a half ago we lost Charley Heiser, one of the giants of 20th century botany. Although he is best know for his work on sunflowers and hybridization, he and his students also devoted themselves to the study of cultivated plants, some well known (chile peppers), some less well known (pepino, naranjilla, and quinoa), and some unusual (like the gourds worn as penis sheaths in New Guinea and South America).1
Two of his students, Barbara Pickersgill and Greg Anderson, have written a biographical memoir that is now available as a free PDF download from that National Academy of Sciences.
[A]lthough new techniques have necessitated modification of some of charley's interpreta- tions, others still stand. his publications are still much cited and remain a monument to a professional lifetime spent on what a former ph.d. student described as "never work--more like a full-time hobby."
Regular readers will remember that I spent most of July and August in South Africa measuring plants and collecting specimens as part of a large, NSF-funded Dimensions of Biodiversity project. The project focuses on the plant genera Protea and Pelargonium, and we seek both to understand functional trait variation within these and to relate it to the community context in which the plants are embedded.
We are now seeking new post-doctoral research associate to join us on the project. The person we hire will be required to spend a long period of time in South Africa starting in June or July 2012 and will be responsible for design, implementation, and analysis of field and greenhouse experiments that explore the relationship between leaf traits, leaf physiology, and leaf longevity. (See the job ad for a more detailed description of the position and the project web page for more information about the project. Click on the "Dimensions of biodiversity" tag at the bottom of this post or in the tag cloud for some blog posts about the project.)
We'll start reviewing applications in late January. Please pass this ad along to anyone you know who might be interested.
The first international "Fascination of Plants Day"
will be launched under the umbrella of the European Plant Science
Organisation (EPSO). The goal of this activity is to get as many people
as possible around the world fascinated by plants and enthused about the
importance of plant science for agriculture, in sustainably producing
food, as well as for horticulture, forestry, and all of the non-food
products such as paper, timber, chemicals, energy, and pharmaceuticals.
The role of plants in environmental conservation will also be a key
message. Everybody is welcome to join this initiative! (source)
The website for Fascination of Plants Day opened on November 4th. You can follow the news about it at http://www.plantday12.eu/news.htm.
My copy of Arthur Haines' Flora Novae Angliae arrived yesterday. I've barely had a chance to crack its covers, but it's already earned a place of honor on my bookshelf next to Gleason and Cronquist.1 It's wonderful to have a modern flora to refer to. If only it had arrived while there were still some things in flower!
As with any new flora, there are things that will take some getting used to. Flora North America reconciled me to Huperzia and Diphasiastrum long ago, but it's going to take me awhile to get used to referring to my spring friend, the flowering dogwood, as Benthamidia florida.2
Arthur's work is magnificent. I am sorry that my good friend Les Mehrhoff didn't have a chance to see it in print. He would have been even more excited to hold it than I am. And he would put it to far better use.
Here's the blurb from the Yale University Press web site:
This comprehensive manual offers accurate, up-to-date, and clear
information for identifying New England's remarkable array of
tracheophytes (vascular plants, excluding mosses). With fully researched
entries on some 3,500 native and nonnative species, the book is the
first in decades to provide a complete and correct botanical reference
for the region's noncultivated plants. The volume includes many new
species not documented in New England before, while also excluding many
species that have erroneously appeared in earlier manuals.
Focusing
on the taxonomy and distribution of New England plants, the manual is
largely dedicated to identification keys and to species entries that
provide scientific name, origin, regional conservation ranking, common
name, synonyms, distribution, ecology, and other miscellaneous items of
interest. Nearly one-third of the entries are accompanied by helpful
black-and-white line illustrations.
Dan Sperduto and Ben Kimball wrote a beautiful book, The Nature of New Hampshire published by the University of New Hampshire Press. I've been meaning to give it a plug for several months, because it's been sitting on my desk that long. I am sorry to confess that I haven't had time to look at it carefully yet, but just looking at the table of contents makes me drool.
It describes community assemblages and characteristic species for each of the eight broad community types found in the state: alpine and subalpine, rocky ground, forests, peatlands, swamps, marshes, river channels and floodplains, and seacoast. It's filled with beautiful photographs and line drawings that illustrate the features being described.
It's clear that when I finally find the time to sit down with this book and especially when I find the time to compare what I read with what I see when I visit natural communities in New Hampshire that I will learn a lot. Anyone who's interested in New England's natural heritage should get themselves a copy as soon as they can.
Everyone knows that flowering plants depend on the transfer of pollen from anthers (where the pollen is produced) to stigmas (where the pollen is deposited) for sexual reproduction. Many know that there are many ways this transfer happens. In some plants bees carry pollen from one flower to another, in others moths, butterflies, birds, bats, or rodents and marsupials. Sometimes plants don't even need an animal -- wind or water carries pollen from one flower to another. And some plants don't need any help at all. Some plants directly deposit pollen on their own stigmas -- self-pollination.
When plants depend on animals to carry their pollen, they typically provide a reward. The reward may be nectar or it may be pollen. But sometimes they don't provide a reward at all. They deceive their pollinators.
One of the most striking of these deceits is pseudocopulation. As David Attenborough puts it in this clip, "[the orchids] bamboozle their pollinators into thinking they're going to get a really sensational reward," or as Oakes Ames puts it in a 1937 article from the Botanical Museum Leaflets of Harvard University "the insect seems to be sadly hoodwinked." The male bees and wasps (and it is only males) are "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked" because they think they are copulating with a female of their own species when what they're really doing is pollinating an orchid.
Michael Pollan describes it this way in a recent article in The Guardian:
It works like this. The male bee alights on the bee-like labellum and
attempts to mate, or, in the words of one botanical reference, begins
"performing movements which look like an abnormally vigorous and
prolonged attempt at copulation". In the midst of these fruitless
exertions, the bee jostles the orchid's column (a structure unique to
orchids that houses both male and female sexual organs) and two yellow
sacs packed with pollen (called the pollinia, another structure unique
to orchids) are stuck to his back with a quick-drying glue-like
substance. Frustration mounts until eventually it dawns on the bee that
he has been had. He abruptly flies off, pollinia firmly attached, in
frantic search of more authentic female companionship.
He goes on to speculate about the reasons for our fascination with orchids:
To learn all this about orchids is to admire them more but perhaps
love them less. And to wonder if we too haven't fallen prey to their
deceptive charms. The very name of the orchid comes from the Greek word
for testicle, referring not to the plant's flowers but its bulbs, organs
that have long been endowed with aphrodisiac properties. But it doesn't
take a Freudian to discern a strong sexual subtext in the passion for
these flowers, especially among men, who, as any visit to an orchid show
will tell you, suffer disproportionately from "orchidelirium" - the
Victorians' term for the madness these flowers inspire.
Is it
possible that humans can look at an orchid and, like the deluded orchid
bees, see an apparition of female anatomy? (Georgia O'Keeffe certainly
did.) Could it be that plant sex and animal sex have got their wires
crossed in human brains, just as they have in insect brains? Ever since
the first human-hybridised orchid bloomed (the earliest in the Western
world was recorded in 1856), we humans have become important orchid
pollinators, lured into advancing the orchid's interests, assisting it
in its quest for world domination. Today, there are some 100,000
registered hybrid orchids, most of them literally inconceivable without
us.
Not that any of this was ever in the orchid's plan. In
evolution there is no plan, of course, only blind chance. But what are
the chances that a flower deemed sexy by a handful of witless insects
would also be so deemed by us? Let's face it: we're all orchid dupes
now.
