Cactus Blog

A remarkable relationship between a shrew and a Montane Pitcher, from the Guardian.

Oh yes, you read that right.

Biofuel cell inserted in a cactus and graph showing the course of electrical current as a function of illumination of the cactus (black: glucose, red: O₂).

The picture is not big enough to be able to tell what species that is, but I’m guessing a cereus of some type.

With this advance, you could attach a wire to a cactus and you can power a fan  to cool yourself off in the desert. (Well, that’s my interpretation. Your mileage may vary.)

Science!

Euphorbia lactea crest “Ghost”

So many things going on here. First we have a crest, a process of fasciation, possibly caused by a virus, whereby the growing tip, the apical meristem, grows perpendicular to the stem rather than from a single point as normal.

Then we have the “ghosting” where by the plant has lost most of it’s chlorophyll, also probably through a virus. Now normally for a ghost plant to survive, myco-heterotrophy will provide the food needed as it takes advantage of a symbiotic relationship with certain fungi. However, in this particular case, this ghosted crest has not successfully developed it’s long-term relationship to the fungi to be able to comfortably rely on them enough, or at all. So off to the grafters we go.

And we see that this crest is in fact grafted onto another euphorbia which serves as the rootstock for this ghosted crested scion.

And all this just so that we may enjoy this stunning plant. Or for you, this photo.

I recently bought Richard Dawkins latest epic, “The Greatest Show on Earth” but I haven’t had the time to read it yet, what with the latest issue of Archie Comics having just come out. But the San Francisco Chronicle has this little gem from the book:

An “evolutionary arms race” pits cacti in the Galapagos against browsing tortoises, so the cactus grows taller to escape the browsers and the browsers evolve saddle-backed shells that enable them to stretch higher for the cacti.

I can’t wait. Tortoises AND cactus, together in one book! Exclamation points for everyone!

Science! (more…)

…in the Burseraceae family

Bursera morelensis

Endemic to the hills of Guanajuato, Mexico, this rare Bursera is rarely offered for sale, but is being studied for medicinal purposes.

Other Bursera species are grown for their fragrant sap (frankincense) and used as incense in religious rituals. Others are harvested for a resin known as copal.

So it’s not a surprise that there are properties to the Bursera.

Here we have a study of parthenocarpy in the plant. What they discovered is that this plant will sometimes produce fruit without seeds – and will even change the structure of the fruit when it does so. They theorize this is to trick predatory insects into attacking the parthenocarpic fruits (seedless) and leave the seeded fruits alone. Wow!

And here we have a study of the sap for medical uses. I do not understand the abstract, so I cannot tell you anything about it at all.

Science!

In the meantime, they are a most amazing and beautiful plant, and we received some plants that were being studied by a Bursera botanist for us to propagate.

The science of tequila has just taken a big leap forward.

Geneticists working in Central Mexico have mapped the genome of the blue agave, a desert plant used to make tequila…

And how does this help?

Plants in the agave family die after producing a flowering stem, and slowing the progress toward flowering gives the plants a longer productive life… something that could boost tequila production.

So finally, science has come to the rescue of the margarita industry. Actually, if they can get the Agave tequilana to slow it’s bloom cycle, maybe they can get other agaves re-sequenced too, and then we’d have century plants that live for a whole century! I’m sure they’ll get right on that, since the ornamental plant industry has as much power as the liquor industry, I’m sure.

So earlier this morning I mentioned it’s the time of year to take your final cactus cuts. And I thought I should also mention that it’s OK to take some succulent cuts all the way into winter.

For instance, Aeoniums. And Aloes, too!

Fun fact: Did you know that the stoma of the aloe leaf are often sunken, and surrounded by well-developed lobes?

Portion of Vertical Section of Aloe Leaf

1. Stoma                            5. Vascular Bundle
2. Cuticle                          6. Water Storage Tissue
3. Upper Epidermis     7. Palisade Tissue
4. Palisade Tissue         8. Lower Epidermis

And from Aloes: The Genus Aloe By Tom Reynolds

Science!

According to the BBC, grow cactus!

Few plants can grow without soil and even fewer are capable of growing on nothing but bare rock….

The plants have evolved a symbiotic relationship with rock-dissolving bacteria…

The cacti even incorporate these rock-busting bugs into their seeds…

“When a seed falls in bats and bird droppings onto barren rock, it contains all the bacteria it needs to pioneer colonisation of that rock,” says Dr Bashan.

Wow.

A newly discovered giant pitcher plant in the Philippines has given the BBC the vapours. Discovered on Mt. Victoria, it’s big enough to eat rats.

For some reason they’ve also included this photo of unidentified blue fungus. Science!

They’ve found that cactus help keep ticks away from livestock. I’m not really sure how this works, but here’s the evidence.

Researchers at the National Agriculture Research Institute (Naro), who have been undertaking a study on effective control of ticks using botanical solutions, said the cactus shrub has spikes which put off ticks from climbing farm fences to bite animals.

No species name. It’s not even clear to me if they mean an actual cactus, or a spiny shrub that they call the cactus shrub.

Scientists found that ticks do not like the cactus because animals naturally do not go near the plants, but also due to their spikes that make their environment uncomfortable.

But the veterinarians have found that when crushed and mixed in water, spraying it on animals kills all the ticks just like conventional acaricides.

Now that is really interesting. If only it would work on aphids, too.

Calibanus hookeri, a caudiciform member of the Agave family (Agavaceae) which we already said was maybe actually in the Lily family, but let’s not get that started all over again.

Here are the blooms. This is a male plant, as we can tell by the blooms. For some reason all our plants that we see bloom are male, and so that explains why we do not get seed.

As you can clearly see with this super slo-mo closeup, there are stamens there, composed of the little pollen-covered anthers on top of the slender filaments, but no pistils, i.e. the often quite graphic stigma in the center on top of the ovules.

Science!

A cactus-based sugary syrup has become the latest darling of the alternative-sweetener world.

Once mostly unheard of outside natural food stores, agave syrup — made from the same Mexican cactus that yields tequila — suddenly is getting celebrity endorsements, competing for shelf space at mainstream grocers and is a must-have cocktail ingredient.

“If I’m going to be making a premium margarita, agave nectar’s got to be riding shotgun,” says Food Network star Guy Fieri, better known for his greasy spoon affection than his natural foods know-how.

Now I’m a big fan of agave syrup, using it for cocktails as well as for cooking, but having been in the cactus business now for a while I feel the cactus pedant coming out. Look out.

Agave is not a cactus. It is a succulent in the lily family (liliaceae) or at least the agave family (agavaceae) depending on who you ask.

Agave is a genus within the family Agavaceae, which is currently placed within the order Asparagales. Agaves were once classified in Liliaceae, but most references now include them in their own family, Agavaceae.

But definitely not a cactus, for it has no areoles.

Science!

Scientists from the University of Sheffield are leading a project to determine the conservation status of the world’s cactus species.

Cacti have long been thought to be one of the groups of species that has in recent times suffered most from human activities, including over-harvesting and habitat change. However, the evidence to date has been rather limited.

Actually, I think there has been a lot of evidence to date. I’ve posted various studies over the years about individual species. Of course, that doesn’t include the cactus family as a whole. Many cactus to begin have very small populations, very narrow botanical niches. They survive in some very harsh conditions, and as you travel a little distance where the conditions become slightly less harsh, then often other plants easily take over.

As part of the Global Cactus Assessment, researchers at the University of Sheffield have so far worked alongside experts from Costa Rica, Mexico and the USA, to review the Meso-American region in order to identify the distribution, threats and status of each of the species that occur there.

That’s a lot of species to identify and review. Good luck with that. Just wait til they get to Bolivia.

Lewisia longipetala is a native.

I wonder what Cal Flora says about it?

Communities: Subalpine Forest, Alpine Fell-fields

Lewisia longipetala, a dicot, is a perennial herb that is native to California and is endemic (limited) to California alone.

Observations by County: Click county name to view observations. [Number of observations in brackets].
El Dorado [7], Nevada [6], Placer [2].

OK, so then what does the USDA say?

Lewisia longipetala (Piper) S. Clay – Truckee lewisia

Symbol: LELO2
Group: Dicot
Family: Portulacaceae
Duration: Perennial
Growth Habit: Forb/herb
Native Status: L48 N

Very interesting…

Of course, “Little Plum” is a hybrid, so who knows.

These blog posts where I farm out the tough work is pretty easy on me. I wonder what any of that info above really means. Well, let’s start with the word “Dicot.”

Dicot: Simply put, the first leaves of a flowering plant that come out of a seed are called cotyledons, and if there are 2 leaves the plant is called a dicot and if there is only one then it is a monocot.

Science!

From the Smithsonian Collection of Flora of Puerto Rico.

Jatropha curcas L. det. by P. Acevedo-Rdgz.

Those large seed pods of the J. curcas are the future of bio-fuels.

The Jatropha is in the Euphorbia family, has succulent stems, and gets nicely shrubby with beautiful leaves. Most Jatrophas are known for their leaves, some for their caudexes. And all are, as members of Euphorbiaceae, poisonous.

Sometimes we have a bit of science on this blog, sometimes even some Science! but today we have the physics of cactus, from Physics Today or some such journal.

(Left) Mammillaria elongata, or golden star cactus, displays a helical morphology. (Right) A magnetic cactus of dipole magnets on stacked bearings assumes phyllotactic spirals, similar to the biological cactus. With the magnetic cactus, physicists have investigated the dynamics of phyllotaxis. Image credit: Cristiano Nisoli, Nathaniel M. Gabor, Paul E. Lammert, J.D. Maynard, and Vincent H. Crespi. ©2009 APS.

And here’s the science bit:

In a recent study, researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time a celebrated model of “phyllotaxis,” the study of mathematical regularities in plants. In 1991, S.L. Levitov proposed a model of phyllotaxis suggesting that the appearance of the Fibonacci sequence and golden mean in the pattern of spines on a cactus can be replicated for cylindrically constrained, repulsive objects. Now, researchers have constructed a “magnetic cactus” with 50 outward-pointing magnets acting as spines, which are mounted on bearings and free to rotate on a vertical axis acting as the plant stem. With this setup, the researchers, from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; and The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), have verified Levitov’s model, and their study has been published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

There’s more too, if you click through. Maybe I should have borrowed a smaller quote, but it’s early and I feel like giong to get another cup of coffee instead of excerpting all morning long. Interesting concept, though.

First the setup:

About 90 Krueger Middle School students got an early jump on the activities at this week’s BioBlitz at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

The event, sponsored by National Geographic, is bringing in thousands of scientists and other volunteers to catalog as many plants and animals as possible….

Now the quote of the day:

“We even have cactus in the dunes,” Jaden Lance noted.

I like that. “We even have cactus in the dunes” would be a good title for my next book. (OK, my first book, but you get the idea.) Now how about a coda:

A seventh grader found a ladybug crawling along a blade of grass and showed it to a few classmates.

Science!

Yesterday I published a photo of a Sarcocaulon crassicaule in bloom.

Today I “borrow” a botanical drawing.

via Aluka

A possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder has been identified, and it’s Bayer.

From Salon, I’ve quoted the damning parts, but there is more than just this, so read the whole thing.

Beekeepers have singled out imidacloprid and its chemical cousin clothianidin, also produced by Bayer CropScience, as a cause of bee die-offs around the world for over a decade…. due to a disclosure in December 2007 by Bayer CropScience itself. Bayer scientists found imidacloprid in the nectar and pollen of flowering trees and shrubs at concentrations high enough to kill a honeybee in minutes….

Imidacloprid and clothianidin are chloronicotinoids, a synthetic compound that combines nicotine, a powerful toxin, with chlorine to attack an insect’s nervous system. The chemical is applied to the seed of a plant, added to soil, or sprayed on a crop and spreads to every corner of the plant’s tissue, killing the pests that feed on it….

Today the EPA’s own literature calls it “very highly toxic” to honeybees and other beneficial insects….

So is this what you’ve been using? It’s in Bayer Tree and Shrub products. Interestingly, they have a major research facility here in Berkeley just a few blocks from our home. What giant chemical company implicated in the die-off of bees do you have near your home?

From the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of natural History, Department of Botany, Flora of West Indies feature presentation, comes this stunning red bromeliad.

Bromelia pinguin
Location: U.S. Virgin Islands, St. John
Photographer: P. Acevedo

Apparently it has a lot of common names.

Common Names: Ananas marrón (Dominican Republic), Bayonette (Haiti), Bayonette (L. Antilles), Bayonette pingouin (Haiti), Fleur de Jerichó (Haiti), Karatas (Dominican Republic), Karatas (L. Antilles), Maya (Cuba), Maya (Dominican Republic), Maya (Puerto Rico), Piña cimarrona (Cuba), Piña de cerca (Cuba), Piña de ratón (Cuba), Piña ratón (Cuba), Ping wing (Jamaica), Pingouin (Haiti), Pingouin (L. Antilles), Pinguin (Jamaica), Pinguin (L. Antilles), Pinguin (Puerto Rico), Rubibarbo de la tierra (Cuba),

Oy, what a lot of common names. I like “Piña ratón” myself.