False Birds of Paradise

Species name: Heliconia latispatha

Common name: expanded lobster claw, false bird of paradise

Location: Dominican Republic

The false bird of paradise is not native to southwestern Ontario, but it is native to where I photographed it; it is native to Central and South America, extending from northern Argentina up to the southern tip of Mexico. It is still quite common in some areas, but since it prefers moist, temperate forests in which to grow since intense heat can damage the flowers and the leaves. These forests, the same ones in which coffee thrives (which you can read all about HERE), are at serious risk of deforestation due to their rich soil that is ideal for use in agriculture, and also due to climate change. As the earth warms, these forests are turning into dry temperate forests since rainfall in these areas is decreasing. The false bird of paradise has been transported to many other areas of the world where it thrives in the wild and in cultivation, the most popular of the two being the South Pacific islands (Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, etc.) and Hawaii. There is actually no above-ground stem that exists in this plant. What looks like a stem is called a pseudostem; it is merely a bundle of petioles all packed in together. The true stem of the plant is a rhizome which can be found underground.

These plants are actually quite closely related to the traveller's palm (which you can read all about HERE), and there's one way that you can tell: the colour of the seeds. If these flowers were producing fruit and seeds, you would see that the seeds were bright blue (but don't have the same surface hairs like the traveller's palm seeds do). These seeds were sometimes used to create a type of "war face paint" when crushed. The colour doesn't last long, so it has limited use as a natural plant dye. It could just be that it requires a very specific type of mordant (a substance that adheres a dye to a fabric) that hasn't been tried yet.

I read on a website about the plants of Hawaii that this plant is similar to day lilies in North America; the variation in flower colour due to hybridization and selective breeding is enormous (within the species, let alone in the entire genus of Heliconia; there are about 60 species in the genus and all of their flowers are wildly different). There are some gardens in Central and South America and in Hawaii that only have Heliconia flowers planted; you would never guess that they were all closely related unless someone told you! These flowers aren't just grown ornamentally outdoors; there is also a huge market for greenhouse-grown disease-free flowers since they are so remarkable looking and are popular in flower arrangements. The flowers themselves are extremely long-lived, and can last up to a month in a flower bouquet!

The lemur-faced traveller's palm

Species name: Ravenala madagascariensis

Common name: traveller's palm, traveller's tree

Location: Dominican Republic (the last two photos are from Wikipedia)

The traveller's palm is native to, as you should be able to deduce by the name, Madagascar. It is still planted there as an ornamental species, and is also planted in tropical and subtropical locations worldwide for the same purpose. That being said, this species is rarely found growing in wild, undisturbed areas in Madagascar (which now are very few and far between) and so is at risk of extinction in the wild. This seems to be the case for almost every species native to Madagascar; the expanding cities due to a growing population as well as suitable lands for agriculture are putting all of their native flora and fauna at risk. It's not as short a trip as it seems to get to mainland Africa!

The traveller's palm, often confused for a member of the banana genus (Musa) because of their very similar leaf morphologies, is actually more closely related to ginger than it is to banana. It is the only species in the genus, and there are two other genera that are closely related: the African Birds of Paradise (Strelitzia), and the South American fan palm (Phenakospermum; not even remotely related to the true fan palm which I will profile in a later blog). The South American species, while very popular in Brazil, is rarely used as an ornamental species because of how easily it is destroyed in hurricanes and rain storms with high winds (the stem, while appearing very strong, can actually be cut with a single blow by a machete!).

Why the traveller's palm, you ask? Well, there are two stories for how this common name arose. First, we'll start with the biological reason: the plants almost exclusively grow in an east-west direction. Why is this the case? I don't think anyone has actually looked into why but it probably has something to do with maximizing absorption of light by the leaves. Regardless of why this occurs, it can be used as a crude compass if lost. The other reason it has this common name is because of the fact that the petioles of the leaves catch rainwater where it is stored at the base of the leaves. Rumour has it that you can drink it if you are in desperate need. But you know what else is stored at the base of the petioles? Bugs, scorpions, mud, fungal spores, and bacteria. There is NEVER a time when you should drink the water found at the base of the leaves of a traveller's palm! Even after being purified, it will still have a pretty raunchy smell.

This plant is a very cool example of coevolution between a plant and an animal. The only known pollinators of the flowers of this plant (flowers I didn't actually get a chance to photograph during my trip but Wikipedia has some lovely photos of them) is the ruffled lemur, a primate also native to, and only found on the island of, Madagascar. The long noses of the ruffled lemur almost perfectly coincide with the very long bracts of the inflorescences of the flowers, and the nectaries are actually found under the flowers in the bracts. The lemur climbs up the plant in search of a quick source of sugar, only to have their face covered in pollen of the flower. The next flower they visit has all of the pollen deposited on it, and fertilization occurs. Since they are the only animal that can pollinate the flowers, you will never see the fruit or the seeds being produced anywhere other than in Madagascar, which is a shame; they are a brilliant colour of blue!

The ruffled lemur, the pollinator of the traveller's palm. Isn't it cute?! (Photo source: Wikipedia)

Baloo's pawpaw isn't a pawpaw

Species name: Carica papaya

Common name: papaya

Location: Dominican Republic

The papaya is native to Mexico where it was cultivated first as an ornamental species, then as a fruit. There are logistical problems for the early consumption of papaya as a food crop; I'll mention these issues a bit later in this blog post. Once consumable papayas were developed through traditional breeding about 2,000 years ago, the tree spread throughout the Caribbean and Central America, and it was well established as a fruit crop by the time the Spanish arrived. It was brought back to Spain by Columbus where it was wildly unsuccessful as a fruit tree. It is still widely grown in Central and South America as an ornamental fruit tree, and more often than not decorates hotel grounds and serves as a self-grown crop of fruit at the same time.

The papaya is a highly allergenic fruit when it is unripe, and those with sensitive skin may still have problems when the tree is ripe. The skin of the fruit (also the petioles or "leaf stalks" of the leaves) contains white milky latexes which are highly irritant when the fruit is unripe and lose their potency as the fruit ripens. This unripe fruit latex isn't just irritating to the skin; chemicals in the latex can be absorbed through the skin and pass into the blood stream where the end result can be uterine contractions that have led to miscarriages. This effect hasn't actually been proven in the literature, but there is enough correlative evidence suggesting this is the case that pregnant women should never consume or prepare raw, unripe papaya. Once the flesh of the fruit turns a yellow-orange and is very soft to the touch, the fruit is fine. Another downside of consumption of large amounts of papaya is a disorder called carotenemia, which is yellowing of the palms and soles of the feet because of the high concentrations of beta-carotene in the fruit (what contributes to its orange-red colour). There is no known health effects from this condition other than rather unsightly hands and feet, and papayas contain significantly less beta-carotene than carrots, a vegetable that contributes to more cases of carotenemia than papayas every year. Should this happen, decreasing the consumption of yellow, orange, and orange-red fruits and vegetables will allow for the gradual re-absorption and use of beta-carotene and the orange colour of the palms and soles of the feet will gradually go away.

Given the negative effects that papaya may have, it is actually a fruit that is incredibly healthy. It contains high amounts of vitamin C, B vitamins, lycopene, and quite a bit of dietary fibre for the average fruit. The seeds are also very good for you, containing lots of antibacterial and antifungal compounds that can prevent food poisoning in tropical countries where food is sometimes not prepared or stored according to the same standards as in more northerly countries. Their digestive systems are used to it, but the digestive systems of people living in North America and Europe are more sensitive to the bacteria that may be growing on the food. The seeds can be ground and used exactly as you would use pepper. There is a positive culinary use for the unripe papayas, and that is as a meat tenderizer. The burning feeling you get on your hands if you prepare raw, unripe papayas is actually your skin melting (hopefully you weren't eating while reading this blog post!); you can exploit that effect by combining green papayas and very tough meat before the cooking process. It breaks down the connective tissue in the meat and usually very tough meat can be prepared to be very tender. There is also the suggestion that the consumption of papaya leaves in a tea-like preparation can prevent malaria infections, but these claims have never been demonstrated with scientific evidence.

Unfortunately, papayas around the world (including this tree I photographed) are being attacked by the papaya ringspot virus, or PRV. On the fruit, this disease causes ringspots that eventually turn into black, squishy circles or blemishes on the fruit. There is no harm in consuming these fruits but they are too unsightly to sell and succumb to other diseases more easily during the shipping process. The leaves of the papaya tree also yellow, curl, and eventually fall off (you can see the beginnings of this in the papaya leaf close-up photo I took; between the veins of the leaf the tissue is much more yellow than anywhere else, and the ends of the lobes of the leaf are starting to decay). This leads to a decrease in productivity of the tree, and eventually the death of the tree. Fortunately, there is a way to create genetically modified trees that already contain some of the DNA of PRV, and this confers resistance in every tree it has ever been tried with. This genetic modification is so successful that now 100% of all papaya trees grown commercially for fruit production contain this modification.

Don't squish this spider!

BLOG UPDATE: Good news! I have now gone through all of my pictures from my vacation (can you believe that I took 600 pictures in a single day twice?!), and organized them into "plant pictures," "lizard pictures," and "other" pictures. Since I have so many of them, I might even find a way to squeak a lizard picture or two into a blog post somewhere down the line...

Thanks for bearing with me during my weeks of sporadic activity! Back to regular blog posts we go.

Species name: Hymenocallis speciosa

Common name: spider lily

Location: Dominican Republic

The spider lily, which should be incredibly reminiscent of my last blog post about the potted bulb of the "amaryllis" (which you can read all about HERE), is native to Dominican Republic and other islands in the West Indies. It has been spread all over the world in tropical and sub-tropical areas where it is very popular as an ornamental garden plant (it doesn't do nearly as well in a pot as the traditional amaryllis). While not the same genus, the "amaryllis" and the spider lily are very closely related, and have many characters that are similar between them.

One notable difference is how the flower itself looks. In the spider lily, the tepals are fused into a bottom structure called a staminate cup. Here, all of the stamens (and hence the name of the cup) emerge from the centre of the flower and produce huge amounts of pollen. The bottom of the cup is also where the nectaries are formed, and if you catch the flowers as soon as they open they reportedly have a very strong vanilla-like scent (I can't speak for that since all I smelled most of the trip where these flowers were growing was sunscreen and BBQ!). The seed pods are also quite different than in Hippeastrum; instead of being located on stalks coming off of the inflorescence stalk, they are sessile (or directly attached by their base to the stalk of the inflorescence). Other than those two differences, the leaves look nearly identical, the bulbs are completely indistinguishable from Hippeastrum, and the flower buds before they open look nearly identical.

The growth form of this bulb and where it thrives is also very different from the traditional houseplant amaryllis, and can be used as another easy way to distinguish the two genera. Hippeastrum does very poorly when submerged for any amount of time, and that's one of the reasons why it is recommended when you have an amaryllis in a pot that you water it from the bottom to prevent drowning the bulb. Hymenocallis, on the other hand, can grow in swampy areas where the bulbs are completely submerged in water for months at a time. They do require a dry period to store enough nutrients to support flowers the next year, but this doesn't have to be a significant amount of the year. Also, it does very well growing in pure sand, which is incredibly unusual for a plant since sand contains very few nutrients (the soil is so porous everything just flows right through). Since these plants are such popular ornamental species in the areas where they are native, their status as a common species is secure.

A hippopotamus of a bulb

Species name: Hippeastrum sp.

Common name: "amaryllis"

Location: Ontario

Since I'm still not done going through all of my plant pictures from the Dominican, I figured I would profile a plant from my house! Every year, my grandma gives an amaryllis bulb to every family and there's a friendly competition to see who can get the first flower, the tallest flower stalk, the shortest flower stalk, a bulb that doesn't grow (this always seems to go to my uncle Steve, who couldn't get a weed to grow even if he tried), and the most number of flowers. There are no prizes other than the right to brag to everyone that you know that you're better and/or worse at growing a bulb than the rest of your family. Apparently this is fun...

The plant that has the common name of "amaryllis" actually isn't an Amaryllis at all. The common ornamental species of Hippeastrum (there are approximately 90 species in the genus) are native to tropical and subtropical regions in the Americas, from about Mexico and the Caribbean south to the northern half of Argentina. The appearance of the flowers of this genus can be wildly different, but they all have three things in common: the plants are called "bulbous perennials" (they flower every year from a bulb and live for many years), the flower stalk is the first green part to emerge from the bulb, and all of the flowers have 6 tepals (3 petals and 3 sepals which are indistinguishable from each other once the flower is mature). The true Amaryllis, however, is native to South Africa and is starting to become more and more common throughout the world as ornamental species. The two genera are morphologically similar, but they can be easily distinguished if two species are side-by-side. They were both thought to originally belong to the genus Lilium, which contains all of the "true" 6-tepaled lilies, but DNA sequencing has shown that this is definitely not the case (it was no longer believed to be the case, even before their genes were sequenced; all lilies are highly toxic and have very different growth morphologies than either the amarillii or "amarillii"). There are significantly more issues with the taxonomy of these two genera, but I'm not going to get into that; if you want to read about the issues, you can read the "taxonomy" section of the Wikipedia article of Hippeastrum HERE.

One of the aspects of the indoor amaryllis that makes it such an ideal houseplant is the ease of growing it: put the bulb into some soil (it can be significantly less soil than you think should be able to support how big the plant will actually get), put it in a window, and water it once a week. Seriously! That's it. Some bulbs take longer than others to flower the first time because of the amount of nutrients it managed to acquire the season before; if it doesn't flower right away, give it some time and perhaps put it into a sunnier, less drafty window. The roots will become well-established and will funnel nutrients to the bulb, allowing the flower stalk to start to emerge. It is green when it first starts growing, producing sugars for the rest of the plant to use as fuel for growth. Not long after the flower stalk emerges from the bulb the leaves will start to grow, and within a few weeks you should have something that's starting to look very much like a traditional amaryllis. The varieties and cultivars used for their ornamental value and packed in boxes in November and December are usually grown for their enormous flowers and very long flower stalk; this is typically not how the plants would look in nature (and the last image should give you a hint why if you're observant). The height of the flower stalk and the weight of the flowers is far too much for the plant to handle on its own, and you're going to need to resort to staking up your plant unless you want soil all over the floor! Once the flower stalk is done flowering, you might be lucky enough to get seeds produced, which you can plant in new pots and get new plants growing from seed. Be warned, however, that the offspring will likely look nothing like their parents; genetic recombination that occurs during fertilization means that genes will be shuffled and some that produce the ideal flower and plant morphology of the bulb you bought in the box will be lost.

Once the flower stalk dies, clip it off at the base and allow the leaves to continue to grow and produce sugars that are stored in the bulb (this is where it's important to ignore all information about how to properly grow an amaryllis that's on the box). The leaves will gradually yellow and start to decay; that would be a good time to pull them off the bulb (they should detach very easily at the bulb). Eventually, you'll be left with just a bulb in a pot. Water the bulb very sparingly (as in, not at all or once a month at most) until December rolls around again, and then water it whenever you remember, but no more than once every couple of weeks. Once it's ready, it will start to grow a new flower stalk. Water once a week, and voila! A new flower. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't flower again the second year; some varieties can only afford to flower every other year because of the number of resources it requires to produce the flowers.

A whale of a time

This is a rather unorthodox blog for me, but I'm still busy trying to sort out my Dominican pics to find all the plant pictures interspersed with typical traveler pictures ("is that a lizard?! LET'S TAKE 500 PICTURES OF THE PRETTY LITTLE LIZARD!!!!!").

Since I didn't want to leave my blog high and dry for two whole weeks, I figured I would post a blog that has nothing to do with plants. This is also a celebration of 10,000 page views of my blog. TEN THOUSAND! I'm finding it hard to believe that my blog could be interesting enough to get 10,000 people to read it (or maybe just 10 people visiting it 1,000 times each...still impressive since this is only blog post 228!). From the bottom of my crusty little heart, thank you immensely. I hope you'll all continue to read, and enjoy it for many months (and hopefully years) to come!

And now, some animal pictures. Yes, this is not a blog about animals. Yes, I generally have an aversion to "teaching" about animals only because people seem to value them so much higher than plants. Yes, they're cute when they're babies, but aren't plants cute when they're seedlings, too?! Animals get a lot of press because they display behaviours; mating behaviours, anger behaviours, loving behaviours, grooming behaviours, mourning behaviours, and happiness behaviours. These are all things that we attribute to be inherently human, and when an animal does it we're all fascinated by it. Do I think we spend too much time teaching people about animals? No. I think it's great that so many people want to learn all about different kinds of animals and why they do what they do (and even try to apply it to humans, which is neat and exciting). Plants deserve a lot more attention than they get, hence why I started my blog. But every so often an animal comes along that is just so gosh darn cool that I get excited about seeing them. And so I present to you...


...HUMPBACK WHALES!

Species name: Megaptera novaeangliae

Common name: Humpback whale

Location: Dominican Republic

Every year during the winter months, humpback whales travel from their summer feeding grounds near Greenland, Iceland and Newfoundland in Canada to their winter breeding grounds in the Bay of Samana in the Dominican Republic. There, they frolic in the incredibly warm (trust me, I was drenched by the end of the whale watching trip), very deep water for three months before starting their return trip north. Based on anecdotal evidence, it takes about a month for humpbacks to travel from the Dominican Republic back up to Newfoundland, and probably quite a bit longer than that to finish the trip to Greenland (probably getting distracted along the way by all of the food that they come across; their winter grounds are notably lacking in food sources).

In the Bay of Samana the males perform their courtship behaviours to try to impress females (pictured above is the same male displaying over and over again; he was either pretty desperate by this point or just flaunting what he's got), they mate, and the babies are born. We didn't see any baby whales while we were out on the water; apparently they are very easy to spot because they cannot hold their breath as long as the adult whales (5 minutes for a baby versus 30 minutes for an adult whale) so you see mom and baby surfacing often. The captain of our boat stayed with this whale for almost thirty minutes before we had to go back to the dock; I think even the captain and the guide were impressed with the number of times we caught this over-exuberant male displaying.

Humpbacks were once a critically endangered species because of over-hunting, which has been banned worldwide since 1986. The population of humpbacks worldwide has now ballooned to almost 80,000 whales, and they have now been removed from the endangered species list. A great success story about how conservation efforts and public education can save a species if we start early and get the information out quickly.

Stay away from this plant!

BLOG UPDATE: Starting tomorrow, I will be on a long-awaited internet-less vacation until February 25th, so no blog posts during that time. I'll be back with some awesome plant pictures (and hopefully some pictures of fungi, too!) from the Dominican Republic, so expect some more tropical species when I return! I'll also go out and take some photos of sticks when I get back on a nice day and do the promised series about "winter tree identification using sticks". Cheers! Enjoy the week!

Species name: Solanum pyracanthon

Common name: porcupine tomato

Location: UWO Greenhouse

The porcupine tomato, a close relative of the edible tomato, is native to Madagascar and, like many species there, is at risk due to the enormous amount of deforestation that has occurred there. The plant is still very common in some areas where it grows like a weed, but in others (where it was once common) it is completely absent. The plant has been introduced as an ornamental species to Europe and North America where it has the ability to escape under certain circumstances (usually if planted in gardens in the southernmost regions of both continents). For most that have this plant as an ornamental, there is very little risk of it escaping because it is very frost-sensitive. It is still best, however, to make sure you pick the fruit off the bush before the seeds have a chance to disperse (the fruit really does look identical to a tomato!), as the seedlings almost immediately produce the bright orange thorns which are full of toxins and make the plant very difficult to remove.

Like most species in the tomato family (the Solanaceae), the porcupine tomato produce a class of chemicals called the tropane alkaloids which, depending on the chemical composition of these alkaloids, can prove deadly if consumed. Belladonna, Jimsonweed, henbane and mandrake are all other examples of plants with high concentrations of these tropane alkaloids. Extreme care should be exerted should you choose to grow this plant as an ornamental species; if you happen to prick yourself with a thorn and the thorn breaks in your skin, a flux of these tropane alkaloids will be released directly into your blood stream and it can make you seriously ill. It certainly won't kill you with that small amount, but flu-like symptoms are almost guaranteed. Since the fruits look so much like tomatoes, it is strongly suggested that this plant never, under any circumstances, be exposed to small children as that could have disastrous consequences; a child eating one small fruit will almost certainly die as a result.

Botanical Chinese Lanterns

Species name: Abutilon megapotamicum

Common name: trailing abutilon, Chinese lanterns

Location: UWO Greenhouse

When I first saw this plant (unlabelled in the greenhouse) I thought "what a neat plant! They look like little Chinese lanterns. I'm going to call this the Chinese lantern plant!" Turns out I'm just as good at naming plants with common names as those who have come before me decades (even centuries) before; one of the common names of this plant is indeed the Chinese lantern plant! Contrary to what you might think from the name, it is not native to China, or anywhere in Asia for that matter. It is native to South America, in the tropical forests of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. I'm not sure of the status of this species in its native range, but if it's going through what every other plant native to the Amazon is going through it will be at risk of becoming threatened if the rate of deforestation doesn't drastically decrease.

The way that this plant flowers is completely backwards from what you would guess based on the images, and completely backwards from what I thought in my mind. I thought that I could blog about how the fruit of this species was especially cool because they have paper-thin walls, and the walls of the fruit either are shaken open in the wind when the fruit is mature or they are auto-digested in order to release the seeds. In fact, that red fruit-like structure is the immature flower before it has opened up. Those red "fruit walls" are actually sepals, the bract-like structures that cover the developing flower in order to protect it. What I thought was the spent flower, the picture at the bottom, that was turning into the fruit is actually the flower growing out of the protecting bracts and eventually it will unfurl and be a bright yellow-orange. The plant sure stumped me! I was thinking it was very closely related to the bladder cherry (also called the Chinese lantern plant), but they're not at all related and not used at all for the same reasons. The bladder cherry is sometimes used as an edible plant, but I've only ever heard of it being used as a decorative plant. In fact, one of the uses my supervisor told me about the lantern plant I'm sure you can do with this one, too: literally turn them into lanterns. During the summer when these are ready to bloom, go out and catch lightning bugs (or fireflies; whatever you called them when you were a kid!). Gently squeeze the sides of the red sepals until they start to split open at the bottom. Stuff some lightning bugs in, and voila! Glowing botanical lanterns. Just remember to let the bugs back out after you've taken some photos.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Since yesterday was Chinese New Year, I figured I would do a post about the flowers (and entire plants) traditionally incorporated into a Chinese New Year celebration. I had no idea there were so many, and that each one had its own meaning! So here we go, a brief walk through the plants of the Chinese New Year.

Species name: Prunus mume

Common name: plum blossom, Japanese flowering apricot, Chinese apricot

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (Canadian_flora)

The plum blossom tree is native to China along the Yangtze River basin. It is still incredibly common there, but is also now common in Japan, Korea, and North America where it is grown for its fruit. The fruit is often turned into a syrup and used in traditional Korean, Japanese and Chinese cooking. It is also grown, especially in North America, for its very attractive flowers that have a very strong, sweet scent. One of the reasons why this specific species was chosen as one of the plants for Chinese New Year is because of its flowering time. Granted, where I live it's still -7 Celsius and we have a foot of snow, but the area that this tree is native to is starting to warm up, and the tree flowers in February and March. Perfect timing for a celebration in February! The plant is used to decorate the house because it is seen to be a sign of luck.

The Chinese apricot is also a plant that is important in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a treatment of stomach problems and oral infections. Interestingly, the effectiveness of this plant was studied in a clinical trial in the United States and it was found that extracts of the leaves and stems of the plant are effective in reducing the number of bacteria in the mouth (but not just "bad" bacteria; it also reduces the bacteria in your mouth that control the number of yeast in your mouth. Removing these can lead to an oral fungal infection commonly known as "thrush"), and also is moderately effective in the treatment of gastritis and gastric ulcers. There is also some suggestion that extracts of the fruit may help in increasing the amount of oxygen in muscle tissue, but this effect has only been shown to date in mice.

Species name: Fortunella japonica

Common name: kumquat

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (henryr10)

The kumquat is native to Japan and China, and is a popular edible fruit. Recently it has been introduced to North American supermarkets where it is slowly gaining popularity. We bought a container of them about 10 years ago and I thought they were a lot of work to peel for a fruit that tasted an awful lot like a mix between a clementine and a lemon! I've tried growing them indoors and they seem to not like either the pot and the soil they're in (more than likely), or the fact that I'm trying to grow a tropical fruit tree in a pot in North America (also more than likely). Either way, I'm about to give up on them! By reading about them just now I figured out that I was eating them wrong, and they're actually eaten backwards from every other citrus fruit. Usually only the rind is consumed, which is sweet, and the centre of the fruit is either eaten with the skin still intact or thrown away (it is very sour). They produce a very sweet-and-sour jelly, and so are often used to make preserves or marmalades. The Chinese use them around the Chinese New Year to represent prosperity.

Other than their edible value, kumquats are rarely grown for any other use. Based on the chemical composition of the skin and the fruit there has been the suggestion that they might play a role in preventing cancer, but to date that has never been tested.

Species name: Narcissus sp.

Common name: Narcissus, daffodil

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (kniphofia)

The daffodil is native to Europe, western Asia and northern Africa, depending on the species. The daffodil is such a popular flower that there are over 1,000 cultivars of this plant alone, and they are revered in different parts of the world during the spring. In North America they are sometimes associated with Easter because of their very early flowering time, but also associated with various festivals and cultural or religious events around the world. It is even the national flower of Wales. It is believed that the name comes from the Ancient Greeks, who appreciated the flowers for their beauty but feared the bulbs for their toxins (more about that later). This follows the legend of Narcissus, the man who was so vain and appreciated his own beauty so much that he drowned while admiring himself in a pool of water. The Chinese have a story that a very poor but very happy man was made very wealthy by selling and trading daffodil bulbs, and so the daffodil is now a symbol of prosperity for the Chinese New Year. It is said that if your daffodils flower on the day of the Chinese New Year you will be extra prosperous that year.

It has been known for many centuries that the bulbs of daffodils are highly toxic (one of the contributing reasons why onions were shunned by the Europeans for centuries before they were willing to consume them; they also knew very well that tulip bulbs were also toxic). The bulbs contain the alkaloid lycorine which can cause severe illness when only small amounts are ingested, and can cause death if large amounts of daffodil bulbs are consumed. It also has large amounts of calcium oxalate (oxalic acid) in the sap, which can cause contact dermatitis (often referred to as "daffodil itch"). The Japanese historically used this plant in kampo, a version of TCM adapted by Japanese practitioners sometime between the 7th and 9th centuries. It was used as a paste with wheat flour on open wounds, presumably as a means of preventing infection. It is more likely that patients suffered horribly because of the calcium oxalate and lycorine, and it is no longer included in the list of herbs of traditional kampo.

Species name: Phyllostachys sp.

Common name: bamboo

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (growin)

The word "bamboo" actually applies to a tribe of plants in the grass family which all have the same general morphology of very large, wood-like, hollow stems. Some species grow taller than others, but all of them are very difficult to distinguish unless you're a bamboo expert (there are a few exceptions, but there wouldn't be bamboo experts in the world if it were easy to distinguish them!). The fastest growing species have been used (and are still used in some places) as a building material, and houses are even currently being constructed entirely from bamboo to demonstrate its ability to be used as more environmentally friendly alternative to wood. There are some species that are incredibly invasive, so if you choose to plant bamboo in your yard, make sure you're planting a species that will not destroy the local flora. There is also the legend that the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese armies used growing, living bamboo as a torture device to obtain information from prisoners, with the threats that if the information was not given in an appropriate amount of time, the bamboo would grow up through the prisoner, effectively killing them in an incredibly unusual and painful manner. You can imagine this is a pretty awesome urban legend, and I thought so, too...until I saw it on Myth Busters. They tied a dead pig on a wood-slatted bed, planted bamboo under it and left it alone for a week. When they came back, the pig had been impaled by the growing bamboo, and the bamboo was growing completely unimpeded through the animal. Pretty amazing when you think about the strength that some plants have when growing! To many cultures, bamboo is a sign of luck and the Chinese are no exception. Young bamboo shoots are eaten (if you've never tried some you should; they're fantastic!) after being lightly fried, and young bamboo shoots are also used as a decoration to bring luck during the year to come.

Bamboo is an incredible plant, and not just because of its growth rate. All species of bamboo display something called a "mass flowering," where all individuals of the same original stock flower at exactly the same time (I'm talking within hours of each other, regardless of whether or not they're even on the same continent!). This flowering could take place anywhere from 65 to 130 years after it was planted, depending on the species. Once the flowering is over and the seeds have been dispersed, the bamboo dies. For a plant to have some sort of flowering "alarm clock" that can be accurate to within a few hours after 130 years is mind-blowing. If you didn't think plants were cool before, I hope you do now!

Species name: Helianthus annuus

Common name: sunflower

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (Noell_swfl)

The sunflower is native to eastern North America, right around the Great Lake States and New England, stretching upwards just into Ontario. It is an annual plant, meaning it completes its life cycle in one year, so the fact that it can grow to be almost the height of a one-storey house in a single summer is impressive. The young flowers, often portrayed in native Mexican and southern American art as the sun, follow the path of the sun during the day and return to their starting position at night. Older flowers do not portray this; instead all of the flower heads are fixed in an easterly direction and so if you see them in the morning you might think they're facing the sun (when they're actually facing that direction all day). The seeds, a popular food for birds and small mammals in the wild, were used by early native North Americans as a source of food and also as a source of cooking oil. Seeds of the sunflower were brought over to Europe by the early conquistadors, where they became very popular with the Russian Orthodox church since they produced one of the only cooking oils allowed during the fasting of lent. I'm not sure where the Chinese adopted the flowers, but they are associated with a good year and so are used in decorating doorways and the dinner table.

One of my favourite days of the year is May 1st. Why, you ask? Well, because it's International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day, of course! You can sign up on the website guerillagardening.org to participate in this day of spreading flowering cheer by agreeing to distribute sunflower seeds in neglected flower beds, in ditches along roadsides, in neglected planters, and any other neglected dirt-filled space. Just make sure you're not planting them in peoples' gardens! They might not like that. :)

Species name: Solanum melongena var. esculentum

Common name: eggplant

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (NovKate)

The eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, a family of not only deadly toxic plants (such as Belladonna) but also many of our most popular edible plants (like tomatoes, potatoes and bell peppers). They are native to India, whereas most of their edible family members are native to the Andes in South America. Eggplants, also known as aubergines in Europe, come in many different shapes, sizes and colours, but the most popular are the traditional large, purple, egg-shaped fruit sold in North American grocery stores. The Chinese often grow plants that produce much longer fruits that are much more narrow, and can have colouration from a deep purple to almost white, and the fruits are often vertically striped or with an "ombre" effect (dark towards the tip of the fruit and a much lighter purple towards the end where it attaches to the stem).

There is an anecdotal study that reports that some people can have an allergic reaction to handling eggplants, which should come as no surprise based on its closest relatives. These allergies usually manifest themselves as a rash on the skin, but some people report nausea or upset stomach as a result of eating it. This usually only occurs in people who show a hypersensitivity to chemicals on their skin, but atropine, a chemical present in small quantities in eggplant and other species in the genus Solanum, can make skin photosensitive (meaning the rash is intensified in bright sunlight). The Chinese have used eggplant leaf extract in a paste-like form for centuries as part of TCM; it is believed that it can heal wounds quickly. It is used during Chinese New Year as a symbol of healing. It is also rumoured to be effective as a weight loss aid after the effect was demonstrated in rabbits; since then a few clinical trials have attempted to reproduce this effect in humans to no success; it was significantly less effective at causing weight loss than diet and exercise (either of these alone or combined).

Species name: Sandersonia aurantiaca

Common name: Chom mon plant, Chinese lantern lily

Location: photos from Dave's Garden (bonitin)

The last plant associated with Chinese New Year is the Chinese lantern lily (known only by that name in North America and Europe), or the Chom mon plant. It is native to South Africa and also flowers right around this time, and so lends itself to use as a decoration during the most important Chinese celebration of the year. The flowers, resembling Chinese lanterns, are symbols of tranquility. It is now incredibly rare in the wild in its natural habitat, often seen only on nature reserves and never in commonly visited locations. If you choose to purchase one of these plants, make sure your seller is reputable and does not obtain their stock (most commonly grown from tubers but sometimes by seed) from the wild.

The Chom mon plant has been associated with TCM for centuries (as well as traditional Zulu medicine in Africa) as an aphrodisiac, although now has been abandoned as a plant with any medicinal value. This is because the entire plant contains high levels of the chemical colchicine, an alkaloid that can cause death, having effects that closely mimic arsenic poisoning. Despite this, it is still used as a remedy for arthritic gout, and has been rumoured to be an effective cancer treatment. There are some clinical trials underway on non-human animals about the effectiveness of colchicine in treating (or preventing) cancer, and so far the results have been far from positive. Unless colchicine is prescribed for you by your doctor, I would absolutely steer clear from it!

To all of my blog readers: Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Hey Fat Choy!