Let’s hoedown!
1. Japanese Wisteria and Chinese Wisteria twine in opposite directions: Japanese goes clockwise and Chinese counter-clockwise.
2. To stratify seeds that need cold treatment before germinating: place them in moist Perlite in a loosely tied plastic bag and place in the refrigerator. Towards the end of the stratification period, check them frequently because some species will germinate readily cold/moist conditions.
3. Juvenility in plants is often manifested in thorns and retention of leaves in the fall. In Pin Oak (Quercus palustris), you can see areas of relative juvenility by observing where the leaves are retained over the winter. This is helpful when taking cuttings or initiating tissue cultures.
4. Have we already had the peaches-nectarines conversation? Nectarines = hairless nectarines. Exact same fruit. Really.
5. Phytophthora ramorum, the pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death, was first noticed to affect Tan Oak in California in the mid-1990s (Lithocarpus densiflorus). Because this tree was thought of as a weed species, no one was excited about it, and it hadn’t yet been identified or described. Then the trees on George Lucas’ property began to die, and the rest…is history. The pathogen was identified at UC Berkeley, and the nursery industry and USDA have undertaken intensive efforts to eliminate it from nursery stock and particularly interstate shipments.
6. An interesting way to inoculate substrate with predatory nematodes is with the use of infected cadavers. While availability is currently very limited, it introduces a large number of already-feeding nematodes. And I like the idea of dead things in my plants on purpose.
7. Bloody cranesbill is named for the red sap that wounded roots exude and the beaked seed case that spirals and “pops” to jettison the ripe seeds.
8. You can make exceptional ice cream by using liquid nitrogen to flash freeze your frozen concoction. The nitrogen boils off quickly leaving the tiniest ice crystals and sinfully smooth ice cream.
9. I get asked about this often: people who have degrees in horticulture do not also need the Master Gardener designation. I’m going to leave it at that, but please note, I am smiling wryly.
10. The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) has a favorite color: violet.
11. The relative size of blueberries is a function of the number of times each flower was pollinated. Larger blueberries = more visits from bees and more pollen deposited on the stigma of the flower. Blueberries can have as many as 40 seeds per fruit.
12. Nuts, coconut milk and the like are all referred to as endosperm, and most endosperm is triploid, having one set of chromosomes from the female gamete and two from the male gamete. This comes about from double fertilization which is a derived character of angiosperms, the flowering plants. Unlike gymnosperms, angiosperms make an investment in their offspring early in the process of creating embryos. Conifers and other gymnosperms don’t make the endosperm food source for their embryos until fertilization is complete and the ovate cones begin to grow. I think this means the gymnosperms are pessimists.
13. It’s probably an old wives’ tale, but it works for me: to avoid being stung when you’re in an area where there are a lot of bees foraging, don’t breath through your mouth and don’t wear leather watchbands or belts. I’ve only ever been stung when I accidentally crushed a bee, and I’m against mouth breathing as a matter of principle anyway.
14. When a plant is genetically engineered with a gene from another plant that lends resistance or some other characteristic, it may also take on the allergenic properties of the donor plant. So, if legume genes are used to modify another food crop, peanut allergic people could be in real danger. Hopefully this possibility will be addressed when products like this enter the marketplace.
15. Green Day has done an excellent cover of Working Class Hero, which I have designated this summer’s theme music for agricultural workers.
