Las Tres Hermanas

Today instead of a "regular" blog where I only profile one species, I figured I would profile a mini-ecosystem, and a traditional method of growing crop species. On campus there was a recent initiative to convert some "wasted space" (a plot of land completely over-run by Japanese knotweed, which you can read about HERE, and buckthorn, which you can read about HERE) into a garden. This isn't your everyday garden, even though at first glance you might think it is. This is an Aboriginal garden. What makes that different from a regular garden? Well, all of the plants grown in the garden have traditional uses, and some are even heirloom varieties, to Aboriginal North Americans. Many of the species grown are food crops, and they're grown in the same manner that their ancestors would have grown them, and they're growing the same varieties that their ancestors would have grown 3,000 years ago. I find this a pretty mind-boggling idea: growing the exact same genetic variety of plants as your ancestors did 3,000 years ago. Not looking up at a 3,000 year old tree and thinking "gee, I wonder how it got here" (there are very few of these left in the world, but they do exist), but growing the same food to eat that your ancestors ate. Awesome! There are a bunch of other plants in this garden other than just the three I'm profiling (including "medicinal tobacco," which is a concept I will never understand) so if you're on campus sometime next summer or fall make sure you walk around the outside of the garden and check out what they're growing (the garden is behind Collip building, near the lower greenhouses. A PDF map of campus is available HERE).

So with out further rambling, I present the Three Sisters:

Sisters, huh? These are three crop species all domesticated at about the same time (5,000 years ago) all in the same place (Mexico), and all eaten at the same time. Corn, squash and beans all contain different quantities of essential nutrients, and when the three are eaten in combination they provide an excellent balanced diet. Corn is rich in starch, beans are rich in protein, and squash contains many of the vitamins and other nutrients not in the other two (plus has a nice sweetness to balance a meal). Sometimes you'll also find potatoes added to a Three Sisters soup, but don't worry. That should actually be called a Four Sisters soup, and would have been a traditional food of Peruvian people (once corn had been domesticated into a crop species and the knowledge and seeds were shared; potatoes, beans, and a different type of squash had all been domesticated in and around Peru about 9,000 years ago!)

So let's talk about each species!

Species name: Zea mays

Common name: corn

Location: Western University campus (Aboriginal garden)

First we've got the plant that's most easily distinguished in the first image, and that's corn. Corn is a very unique plant in that it is monoecious: this means it has separate male and female flowers on the same plant. The male flowers, called staminate flowers, are at the top and are often called the "tassel." The female flowers, called ovulate flowers, can be found at the base of each of the leaves and they turn into the cobs of corn that we eat for dinner. If you are driving down a highway in "corn country" (there are a lot of farms that grow corn in Southwestern Ontario, but also a huge number of farms in the southern United States), keep your eyes peeled for corn growing in tightly packed rows with signs at the end. There would maybe be 2 or 3 of these rows, then a large space (large enough for someone to comfortably walk down and be able to take notes or photographs), and then more tightly packed rows with a different sign. This is the type of growth and the type of planting that comes with field trials of experimental varieties of corn. If the varieties don't work (don't produce enough corn, the kernels are often misshapen, are more prone to disease, don't mature fast enough, or any other number of reasons), then they are scrapped and not grown again. Farmers can "lease" part of their land to plant breeding companies for field trials, and they are compensated often by square foot; for every square foot they allow companies to grow corn, they are compensated for the amount of money they would have earned by growing their own corn on that plot. So if market value of corn is very low, there's little incentive to lease out your land for experiments. If market value of corn is very high, you could lease out a small area, not have to water or fertilize it (so lower cost for the farmer), and still get the same amount of money out of it. Good deal!

But obviously all of this is an aside; I want to talk about corn, not about farming. What do experimental rows of corn have to do with the biology of a corn plant? If you look carefully at these rows, you might notice something missing. It's difficult to put your finger on it if you don't know what you're looking for, but look at the tops of the plants. Do you see any tassels? The answer is more than likely you don't see any. This is an ancient practice dating back to the very first attempts at domesticating corn. People figured out very early that in order to select traits you want to propagate, you have to know who the "parents" are of the plant. Male flowers blow their pollen everywhere, and if the pollen lands on the silks of a female flower then that pollen fertilizes that flower (each kernel of corn used to be its own flower, so in order to get a fully developed cob you have to have every single flower fertilized or you get those awkward holes in the cob that no one likes, and misshapen kernels around the hole). Not knowing what pollen landed on the silks is a big problem, so if you cut the tassels off the top then you eliminate the issue of not knowing what pollen fertilized the female corn flowers. De-tasseling is a very labor-intensive process, and is rarely done anymore with corn unless a breeding program is in place. There are other, much easier ways to sterilize corn but they all involve transgenic (genetically modified) plants. If you want to see how a new variety of plant is doing, usually it's not a transgenic plant (there are many, many regulations in place for new transgenic plants and testing phases; a biotechnology company can't just walk up to a farmer and say "hey! Grow this. I'll pay you.").

So what's special about corn? Well, we've managed to modify the plant beyond its biological means. What do I mean by that? Traditional breeding (controlled crosses of plants in attempts to propagate desirable traits; something still very common in the gardening industry with food and ornamental plants) has managed to completely eliminate the possibility of the corn plant being able to reproduce on its own. Think about the seeds: each kernel of corn is an individual seed, meant to be dispersed into the environment. How on earth is a corn kernel going to be dispersed when it's covered with all of those layers of thick husk? The husk does a great job of protecting the kernels from the outside environment (which makes a good cob to eat), but that's lousy for the plant. In fact, even if the thick husk didn't exist at all, the kernels now more often rot on the plant than fall off because of other traits we have bred into corn plants (no one wants all of their corn kernels loose in the husk, so our ancestors selected traits that kept the kernels on the cob for eating). There are so many modifications that have been made to corn that it now looks nothing like its ancestor, Teosinte. Teosinte is still relatively common in the wild, and grows like a weed. Corn? It would cease to exist in a very, very short time without human intervention.

Species name: Phaseolus vulgaris

Common name: common bean

Location: Western University campus (Aboriginal garden)

Common beans have themselves been domesticated separately dozens of times by different populations of people in Central and South America to create all of the different types of beans we have today. String beans, French beans, haricots, garden beans, navy beans, kidney beans, wax beans, bush beans, pole beans, black turtle beans, pinto beans, and pop beans are all different names of the same species, often associated with specific varieties of the plant (and there are many, MANY other types of beans that are all part of this species). I have no idea what variety or cultivar of beans these are, but they are the "pole bean" type in that they are climbing vines. When the Three Sisters are grown together, corn acts like the pole that beans can grow up. They in turn fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into a type of nitrogen that plants can use, which is like free fertilizer. The corn plant says "thank you very much" and uses almost all of it in order to produce the corn kernels. The bean vines are a bit hard to see unless you know what you're looking for, so I put a red box around where most of the bean plants can be seen. Look for a vine-like plant with leaves that each have three leaflets. It might look a bit like poison ivy has taken over the vegetable patch :)

Also highlighted in this picture is one of the neat characteristics about this traditional corn variety grown: when mature, the husks around the cobs turn a dark purple. In fact, if you compare the picture above (the husk is in the purple box) to the second picture of the corn plants, you can see the drastic difference in shade of purple that the husks are of those two corn cobs. A pretty neat indicator to know when your corn is ready to eat!

Species name: Cucurbita sp. (probably C. maxima)

Common name: squash

Location: Western University campus (Aboriginal garden)

The last of the three sisters is simply known as "squash", and could be any number of species or varieties. This type sure looks like a pumpkin to me, but it might just be a type of "Candy Roaster" squash which was actually domesticated in North America (in the southern United States by the Cherokee). The role that squash plays in an agricultural sense is a "Jack of all trades." The leaf stems or petioles are incredibly prickly with stiff hairs, which is a strong deterrent of agricultural pests. The leaves themselves are enormous, which provides a great amount of shade at soil level. This does two things: first, it creates a cooler microclimate at the base of the corn stalks so that the hot soil in the heat of summer doesn't burn the stalk, and second it shades out any weeds that might want to grow in the garden so the corn and beans can use all the soil's nutrients.

The nutritional side of the squash is two-fold. First, it contains a huge number of nutrients that the other two crops don't have but are necessary for proper nutrition like vitamin A, many of the vitamin B complexes, and vitamin C. It also contains quite a bit of sugar compared to starch, so can be used to sweeten a meal and impart flavour (corn and beans on their own don't taste like much, it's the liquid you cook them in or the spices you add that make them taste good). The seeds of squashes are also incredibly nutritious, but can also be pressed instead of eaten and used as cooking oils. If dried properly, the seeds can also be ground into a paste (the North American version of hummus?), or into a fine powder and used to make bread. Now that I know this I'm on the hunt for squash-bread. If you know how to make this, please let me know. It sounds delicious!

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So there we have it! The three sisters, all being grown just outside my building in a neat, new garden on campus. Now I'm tempted to make some corn, bean and squash soup for dinner...

Green tea: won't cause you to lose weight or prevent cancer, but tastes good!

Species name: Camelia sinensis

Common name: tea plant, tea tree (see below for why you should never call this plant a tea tree), tea shrub

Location: teaching lab at Western

For the last "Plants as a Human Resource plant profile," I figured I would do one of my favourite plants in the world, and one that I exploit multiple times per day: the tea plant. The tea plant (often referred to by it's Latin genus, "Camelia") is native to China, as are all plants with the species epithet "sinensis" (it means "from China"). There are two major varieties of tea plants: one that was domesticated in India and the Middle East called Assam tea (C. sinensis var. assammica), and the other that was domesticated in China and known as Chinese tea (C. sinensis var. sinensis). There are two other recognized varieties but these are only used locally for tea, not shipped to international markets. If the tea you buy is just referred to as "tea," you can be almost guaranteed that it refers to Chinese tea, as Assam tea is almost always specified on the label. It does have a slightly different taste, and when the leaves are cured it brings out the difference in flavour. It would be appropriate to note here why I say above that the term "tea tree" should probably not be used to refer to this plant, despite the fact that it can reach "tree height." When you call something a tea tree, most people think of an essential oil that is referred to as tea tree oil, used in cosmetics and in fragrances (sometimes now used medicinally in herbal medicine, too). This is NOT the same species, and this extract is from the leaves of the tea tree plant, or Melaleuca alternifolia. Please don't drink tea tree oil...your digestive system will hate you for it.

One thing that catches many people off-guard is that ALL types of tea (black, white, green, yellow, oolong, and pu'erh) come from this plant. The way that the leaves are treated after picking is what determines what type of tea the leaves will become. There are also differences in when the leaves are picked, and how many are used in the making of different types of tea.

Black tea: leaves are picked and then allowed to fully oxidize. The leaves are fully oxidized when they turn black and start to roll inwards. The leaves may then be dried and packaged (being cut before or after drying, or left whole), or they may be flavoured before drying. Earl Grey tea has bergamot flavouring added before drying (bergamot oil is extracted from the skin of the bergamot orange), English breakfast tea is made up of plain black tea leaves, Irish breakfast is a blend of Chinese and Assam tea leaves, and Masala chai is a blend of black tea leaves and other spices (and often sugar).

Green tea: the newest leaves are picked, rolled, and immediately dried with minimal oxidization. This allows for a much milder taste, and a taste that blends well with other flavours for tea blends (like dried fruit pieces or other mild flavourings like flower petals). The quality of the leaves, the amount of time they are given to develop on the plant, and the environmental conditions the plant was subjected to during growth all play major roles in the flavour of the tea. Lower-quality teas have a much more bitter after-taste to them than higher-quality teas, and if you compare a good quality green tea to a poorer quality green tea in a taste test you'll be able to tell the difference right away. Because of the lack of oxidization of the leaves, this leaves all of the chemicals intact that many claim have health effects (more on that later).

Matcha tea: this is just a specific cultivar of tea plant where the leaves are dried without oxidization and then ground into a powder. This powder is whisked into warm water until a frothy-like consistency is reached, and then consumed. Many proponents of green tea having positive health effects say that matcha has a much larger effect on health because the leaves themselves are also consumed (unlike drinking traditional green tea).

White tea: this is a special type of green tea, where the leaves are allowed to wither on the plant before they are picked and dried. This prevents the oxidization process, but the leaves are "bleached" on the plant so they are nearly white in colour. This is emphasized by the fact that the leaves are very young and still have a dense covering of white hairs, which make the leaves look even lighter in colour. The term "white tea" does not refer to the colour of the beverage, just like "green tea" doesn't refer to a beverage that is green. If you get a cup of white tea that looks like water...you've just been served water. If you get a cup of green tea that is green (and it's not matcha, which is bright green in colour), you've been served a cup of bad quality green tea and green food colouring.

Yellow tea: this is a relatively uncommon type of tea, where the leaves are allowed essentially to rot slightly while being dried very slowly. This gives the leaves a yellow-ish appearance, and gives a very different flavour to the tea. I have yet to try yellow tea (or see it for sale in many places) myself. Sometimes the term "yellow tea" is used to refer to tea that is either green tea or white tea that is served in the Imperial court (just to make things more complicated).

Oolong tea: this type of tea is almost an intermediate between white tea and black tea. The leaves on the tea plant are allowed to wither during extreme sun exposure during the hottest months of the year, then picked and fermented (not fully fermented like black tea, but fermented enough to give a smoky and full-bodied flavour). The amount of fermentation depends on the quality of the leaves picked, and in some areas in China only one specific cultivar is used to make oolong teas. The withering of the leaves causes them to curl and twist, so watching oolong absorb water during steeping is often a sight to be seen. What looks like tiny little fragments of tea leaves actually unfurl into complete leaves. It's like magic!

Pu'erh tea: this is a type of tea produced exclusively in Yunnan Province in China, and it is made by fermenting and oxidizing the leaves of the tea plant after drying. This gives the leaves a very unique flavour which is difficult to describe, but also allows for customized fermentation and oxidation prior to shipping. The leaves are, more often than not, packaged in "cakes" to be sold and wrapped in decorative foil. This actually allows for the continuous oxidation and fermentation of the leaves during shipping and storage, which is referred to as "aging" the tea. Sometimes tea cakes are shipped immediately and may be aged by the purchaser or used right away (the flavour, and colour of the steeped tea, differs drastically depending on amount of time left to age). Other times tea cakes are allowed to age at the factory, then shipped. These are usually consumed immediately, and are very expensive to buy. The cakes are packaged with "tickets," that are always stamped with a four-digit number. The first two of these numbers represent the year in which the recipe for that specific type of pu'erh cake was developed, the third number refers to the grade of the leaves used (the smaller the better), and the last digit refers to the specific factory in which it was made. To use the leaves, they are often just chipped off the cake until the desired amount is separated, but sometimes the entire cake may be steamed to loosen all of the leaves (and then they would be stored in an airtight container after re-drying). Often a pu'erh knife is used to loosen shavings of leaves from the outer surface; you never take a "slice" of a pu'erh cake because the amount of fermentation and oxidation from the outside to the inside of the cake differs drastically. Sometimes pu'erh tea can taste "fishy" if it is fermented or oxidized too quickly, which is often a sign of poor quality. Choose your pu'erh wisely!

Onto the health effects of tea. For the most part, black tea might be a tasty beverage but it is almost entirely lacking in the polyphenols that tea is known for. If you want to drink tea to be healthy, put the Earl Grey and English breakfast back on the shelf and find yourself a good-quality green tea. There are four diseases or disorders that tea has been shown to have proven positive effects, as demonstrated in large-scale clinical trials. The first is in calming the symptoms of asthma. When green tea is consumed on a regular basis it can act as a bronchodilator, which would increase the air flow to the lungs. This does NOT mean that if you're having an asthma attack you crack out the green tea and make yourself a cup. "Green tea therapy" for asthma is used in conjunction with emergency inhalers and also the everyday inhalers; the idea is that asthma attacks will occur less often, be less severe, and everyday inhalers could be at lower doses and be used less frequently. The next three diseases all have to do with dilating the vascular system; regular consumption of green tea has been shown to help decrease the severity of angina, peripheral vascular disease, and coronary heart disease by increasing the diameter of the blood vessels, allowing for better blood circulation. This definitely won't cure any of the above diseases or prevent you from getting them, but if you are at high risk of developing any of them then it may help prolong the onset (or decrease the severity of the symptoms). That being said, the number one and number two risk factors for all three of those disease are no longer related to inheritance from your parents; they're now obesity and smoking. So do yourself a favour and quit smoking and get out and exercise!

There are a lot of other claims out there about the health benefits of drinking green tea, but so far none of them, I'll repeat that in big letters, NONE OF THEM, have been demonstrated to be true in large-scale clinical trials. People will tell you drinking green tea regularly will decrease your cholesterol and prevent the onset of cancer, neither of which have been demonstrated. Extracts from the tea leaves from the plant (the key here is from FRESH leaves. Are these chemicals still there in quantities that are useful to the body after drying and then steeping in boiling water? Unlikely) have been shown to have anti-cancer properties and the ability to reduce cholesterol but these effects have never been demonstrated in humans. There's also the strong suggestion that drinking green tea will contribute to weight loss, which I find incredibly hard to believe. Any kind of caffeine intake will "contribute" to weight loss if you don't take in more calories than you burn, because caffeine is a stimulant. Will drinking green tea specifically cause you to lose weight? No. Exercise and burning more calories than you consume causes you to lose weight. If you want to lose it, you need to put in the effort. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can drink some tea or take a pill made of green tea extracts and the pounds will melt off.

So are there any benefits to drinking green tea, other than the four mentioned above? Well, the jury's still out. There's evidence that the consumption of green tea SHOULD be beneficial, but nothing has been proven yet. That being said, there's absolutely no evidence that green tea is harmful to you, and if you're concerned about pesticide use there are now an over abundance of companies that produce organic green tea. Just don't go overboard; remember that tea does contain caffeine (although much less than coffee), and if you're drinking it to be healthy you can't be adding milk (or worse, cream!) or sugar. Learn to love the purity of the leaves :)

Sandra's Garden: The Last One

Species name: Syringa vulgaris

Common name: lilac

Location: Sandra's garden

Lilacs are some of the most easily recognizable shrubs used commonly for ornamental purposes. They have large heart-shaped leaves (although, not all plants that have "lilac" as a common name have heart-shaped leaves...), purple to white flowers, and the flowers have *THAT SMELL* that you smell it once and you never forget it. To me, it smells exactly like Myrtle Beach in South Carolina because that's the first place I was ever made aware of the smell; I remember walking to the beach from the camp ground past what must have been lilac bushes and a pond with baby ducks and snapping turtles that would eat the ducks. Thankfully I never actually witnessed a duck being eaten or else it might have scarred me for life. But I feel like I remember there being pens that people would keep baby ducks in so the turtles couldn't get them. Maybe I'm just making things up...this was back when I was 5 or 6 years old. I can barely remember last week!

And back to lilacs. They are native to Europe, from Croatia east to Moldova and south to Albania and Bulgaria. They had been introduced to the rest of Europe centuries ago and lilacs are now considered naturalized to most countries throughout the continent. The earliest settlers to North America brought lilacs as ornamental species, and so they have also existed in North America for many, many years. They are also considered naturalized here (it's even the state flower of New Hampshire), and have very little chance of becoming invasive since so few of their seeds are fertile. Normally you'd think a plant wouldn't do very well in the wild if the majority of the seeds being produced wouldn't be able to grow a new seedling, but this is relatively common in ornamental species (especially shrubs) because of their history of domestication: it was recently discovered that lilacs are actually hybrids of two drastically different species. When you hybridize two species that are closely related sometimes you don't even notice a reduction in fitness (or a reduction in the number of viable seeds being produced, which is a reflection of the potential number of offspring a single shrub could produce, called "fitness"). When you hybridize two species that aren't closely related then usually this reduction in fitness is quite drastic, if the hybrid takes at all. This hybrid shrub was likely a natural hybrid when it was first produced, and was since propagated over time.

Pruning lilacs is an art form to make sure it keeps flowering. If you just whack off the entire shrub at ground level (strangely enough, a "hard prune" is recommended by most garden centres for lilacs at least once every three or so years), you'll get a very "spotty" flowering on your shrub; these plants flower best on old growth. If you're cutting it off all the time, you're eliminating the possibility of getting really showy lilac flowers in the spring. The other side to this story is that lilacs can grow quickly if in optimal conditions, and so they can get to be an enormous size if left unchecked for too long. Dead-heading branches where flowers have been after flowering but before developing seeds can remove the branch's ability to extend further while at the same time promoting flower growth in later years. Win-win! Something to keep in mind too is that lilacs flower best every other year. So if you get one bad year, don't fret! A good one is probably on its way the next year.

If you like the idea of a lilac but absolutely cannot risk having a non-native plant escaping from your yard into a natural area, you could always plant a "doubled" cultivar. These cultivars have been selectively bred to have their stamens (or the "boy parts" of the flower that produce pollen) replaced with petals, so there are eight petals in each flower instead of four. If a flower doesn't produce pollen it cannot produce seeds, so this is a great way of planting a lilac for the smell without worrying about the plant getting away from you.

Sandra's Garden: proof not all Phlox are created equal

Species name: Phlox subulata

Common name: moss pink, moss phlox

Location: Sandra's garden

Last year I posted a blog about moss phlox, a native species we have in our garden that gets a little out of control in really sunny areas. It's a species native to North America, and one that occurs relatively commonly throughout its native range in bright and sunny, damp areas (despite also being drought-tolerant). It is much more common in the United States than in Canada. I knew this species was a popular garden plant based on what I've read about it, but I had never seen any of the cultivars created in greenhouses aside from the "normal" light purple type. Well, here's a spectacular demonstration of the "hidden" morphological variation that some plants contain. This variety of moss phlox was not created in the lab, but is a product of controlled breeding. Despite this, you would never find this variety of phlox in the wild unless it escaped from someone's garden.

So how do we "create" morphological variation in plants that is not typically seen in the wild? The secret is some patience, and a lot of time on your hands (it helps to have a greenhouse because it speeds things up a bit). Natural mutations in the wild create different alleles, or copies of a gene, that can show different morphologies if they have a chance to be expressed. Most of these mutations are what we call "recessive", which means you have to have two copies of the gene in order to be able to see the effect. This is good for the plant if the mutation is detrimental, but bad for gardeners if the mutation is something we want to see. In order to increase the number of recessive mutations in a population you back-cross the plants (breeding a daughter plant with a parent plant), or force inbreeding (forcing a plant with the gene to pollinate itself; sometimes this isn't possible in plants). After enough generations, which can be anywhere from 10 to over 1000 generations to get a pure line, you have a plant that shows only the allele you want expressed. Most garden plants are created this way; you back-cross over a certain number of generations until you get the desired effect in nearly all seeds grown. A huge downside of this type of selective breeding and back-crossing is that you're decreasing the genetic diversity in a population by selecting the alleles you want expressed and eliminating all others. For most plants this isn't a big deal; the ones grown in gardens are hardly reflective of the population as a whole in most cases, and if a virus or fungus or bacterium evolved that could eliminate an entire population of ornamental plant because of the inbreeding and a lack of resistance it wouldn't matter much. You would replant the next year with a different variety and hopefully the problem is solved. The big problem occurs when we start doing this with crop species, as we have been doing for over 12,000 years. Corn, for example, is so susceptible to disease that it is completely unable to survive without human intervention (not to mention we have eliminated the corn plant's ability to disperse its seeds; this is a slight problem if you're a corn plant but a major benefit if you're a human wanting to eat corn seeds). Soybeans in North America right now are on the verge of a massive population collapse due to the fungal disease called the soybean rust. It has recently shown up in the southern United States and is attacking soybean crops that have all shown to be susceptible to the disease. We grow the same variety in Canada (bred to have an increased seed size with an increased oil store in the seed), but are only saved from the attack of the pathogen due to our much colder winters that the fungus can't survive. It's only a matter of time before an entire year's crop is wiped out which could be absolutely devastating to the North American economy.

The previous blog post I did about this plant (which you can read about HERE) mentioned the smell of marijuana that this plant supposedly has, and the drug busts that have occurred as a result of people innocently growing moss phlox and having the smell waft in the wind. I did pick some leaves and crush them up; if you use your imagination I guess it smells like marijuana. I have a hard time believing that it would produce enough of a scent to convince someone there's a drug op in their neighbour's back yard, and I also have a hard time believing that someone would mistake the smell of phlox for the smell of marijuana!

Sandra's Garden: Vancouver's Centennial

Species name: Pelargonium x hortorum 'Vancouver Centennial'

Common name: 'Vancouver Centennial' geranium

Location: Sandra's garden

Geraniums themselves (not real geraniums, of course, but Pelargonium plants) are incredibly popular garden plants around the world. I've blogged about a red-flowering cultivar already, and you can read all about it HERE. This cultivar, however, is a special type of hybrid that has then been selectively bred for leaf shape and leaf colour. The first time I had ever seen this specific cultivar was in Sandra's garden. Since then, I've seen it literally everywhere I've looked. Isn't it funny how things like that happen? Someone brings your attention to something, then you start noticing it a lot more often.

Contrary to what you might think, this cultivar was not created in Canada (despite being named after Canada's famous Vancouver, not one of the United States' many, many Vancouvers) but in the United States. Rumor has it that it was named in honor of Vancouver's 100th birthday, which would have officially been in 1986 (the city was officially incorporated using the name "Vancouver" in 1886; prior to that it was Gastown which was settled in 1867 and grew to become the town of Granville until the renaming in 1886). I'm not sure if this is true or not, but a nice story. The leaf shape was selected by growers to minimize the "frilling" that can be seen in most geranium cultivars, and the leaf colour was selected based on the maximum amount of red that could be bred into the plant until it was no longer healthy and couldn't survive. Leaves are green for a reason; the pigments in the leaves responsible for photosynthesis (the creation of sugar from carbon dioxide, water and light energy) end up giving the leaf its green colour. If you maximize the amount of pigments other than chlorophyll you end up decreasing the plant's ability to make its own sugar, resulting in a weakened plant. At the end of the day, the amount of green and reddish pigment balance that optimized a visually-pleasing leaf but also enough green to maintain the plant's photosynthetic ability was about half-and-half: the green around the border of the leaf and the red on the inside. The decreased frill also ended up with a leaf that is strikingly similar to a maple leaf, giving this plant its other common name: the maple-leaved geranium.

Like many non-native plants, this cultivar of geranium is incredibly slow-growing (which is unlike many of its relatives which are fast-growing) and very sensitive to too much and too little water. Until the plant becomes established in the soil, periods of drought can be seriously detrimental to the health of the plant. Once established, flooding and standing water are its biggest enemies. Surprisingly, this cultivar is much more cold-tolerant than its relatives so will last further into the fall than the average geranium will. It is still frost-sensitive and definitely won't tolerate snowfall or freezing, so there is no need to worry about the potential for becoming invasive (at least in Canada).

Allz you ever wanted to know about Rhododendrons

Species name: Rhododendron sp. (perhaps a cultivar or variety of R. wardii but I'm not positive)

Common name: rhododendron

Location: Sandra's garden

Rhododendrons are really gaining popularity in North America as garden plants, especially those species that are native to this continent. Most gardeners aren't actually aware that we have many native North American species of rhododendron, since the most widely available and easiest to grow are those native to China (like this one probably is), Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Rhododendrons prefer acidic soil which is most commonly found under very old coniferous trees. So if you have some pruned firs, spruces or pines (so that the lowest branches are several feet off the ground and the base of the tree receives a fair bit of sunlight) and want to plant something under them, rhododendrons would be a good bet! Just make sure they will receive enough sunlight; they do best in full sun. Make sure you take care in paying attention to what species you're planting and where you live; various species of rhododendrons can be highly invasive in locations where they are not native.

If you grow your own honey, which is also gaining in popularity with gardeners with large yards since bee populations are on the decline, it is strongly suggested that you do so only when your bees wouldn't have ready access to rhododendrons (and other species in the same genus that we call azaleas because the flowers only have five anthers instead of the usual ten; you can read my previous blog about azaleas HERE). The pollen and nectar of rhododendons contains a toxin called grayanotoxin, which can cause hallucinogenic and laxative effects. Not exactly the kind of thing you're expecting when you consume honey! Horses have an even more extreme reaction to grayanotoxin: it can cause seizures and even death. Thankfully for horses, they usually avoid rhododendons based on the smell alone and would rather look for something else to eat. Cats and dogs also have adverse effects to rhododendrons, but the effect is much more pronounced in dogs than in cats (are cats smarter for staying away from the plant more often? Perhaps. Is this my bias for what pet I prefer more? Perhaps...). Dogs like to chew on sticks, so if you prune this plant and leave the sticks laying around your beloved pet might be in for a surprise. Symptoms include digestive issues, heart palpitations, heart attack, and liver failure. Eventually these symptoms will lead to death if the animal is left untreated. Supervise your pets around your landscape plants!

Rhododendron species are very important to different cultures around the world. For example, different species of rhododendron are the national flower of Nepal, the state flower of both Indian-administered and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, the state tree of Sikkim and Uttarakhand in India, and the state flower of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington in the United States. Not bad for a plant!

The afternoon primrose

Species name: Primula sp. (a garden hybrid of unknown origin)

Common name: primrose

Location: Ontario

Primroses are another great example of why I hate common names. The evening primrose (profiled in a blog post that you can read HERE), is completely unrelated to species in the genus Primula, also called primroses. Sure, they look a little similar (perhaps not the evening primrose compared to this garden hybrid, but some other Primula species), but that's about it. Species of primrose in this genus are native to a wide variety of locations on almost every continent (Australia seems to be excluded from the list) but with the vast majority of the species in the genus native to the Himalayas. Since this garden hybrid (which is actually quite commonly grown) has an unknown parentage, meaning the two or more species that were hybridized to create this cultivar, so I decided to play it safe and call it a non-native species.

I think this species illustrates the concept of a weed perfectly. There is no real definition of a "plant weed," nor are there truly good examples of weed species at least in the common sense of the word. A weed is simply a plant that is growing in a place that we don't want it growing. A plant that is purposefully planted in one garden might be their next-door neighbour's weed. You can probably guess that most weeds are non-native species, only because those are the plants that are most likely to out-compete their neighbours since there are no pathogens to keep their populations in check. This primrose is a great example of a weed in our garden. I have no idea who planted it in the neighbourhood, but one spring it all of a sudden showed up. I ripped it out, but not until after it had gone to seed so now it comes back every year. I wish if it was going to grow it would do it more quickly and make a nice little patch of it that we could put a fence around to keep it contained, but it seems to like being the size that it is (about 10 cm x 10 cm and 4-5 cm tall). I'll refrain from pulling it out this year and see what happens.

I don't think it should come as a surprise to any of my faithful blog readers that I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to classification of species. This is probably because of the results I've found in my own work: apparently we're not very good at defining species of fungi at all, and many things that we thought were "species" are only morphological variants. Even more numerous is the trend the other way: many things that we thought were morphological variants are actually species. It's amazing what happens when you start to sequence a group's DNA and analyze the relationships between species! The genus Primula is a great example of this. There are over 500 species in the genus, some of which are so drastically different morphology-wise (and even habitat-wise, which should tell you something about their evolutionary relationships...) that I find it incredibly hard to believe they're in the same genus. With a more thorough investigation of these 500 species and a comprehensive analysis of the group's evolutionary relationships, it wouldn't surprise me if Primula ended up being divided into 25 or more separate genera. Might even be a fun post-doctoral fellowship... :)

Internationally primrose species have been used as medicinal plants for centuries. In fact, they have so many uses that they just might be a miracle plant should all of these uses prove to be effective in clinical trials. The roots of the plants are prepared in either a salve or a tea to treat any kind of cough (pneumonia, bronchitis, common cold, emphysema, etc.), the leaves are used in a tea to treat any kind of head-related ailment (dizziness, headache, stroke, sleeplessness, paralysis, etc.) and the flowers as a vitamin supplement (rumoured to contain high amounts of vitamin A and vitamin C) as well as any kind of digestive-related problems (diuretic, spasmolytic, and sedative). That's a whole bunch of uses for one tiny plant! I find it hard to believe that it could be effective against everything that might ever ail you, but you never know. With a species diversity in the genus argued to be at 500 species, if each one had a single use that's a whole lot of uses! It's also a good example of a general rule in botany and "plant gathering as agriculture": don't ever eat anything or use something as a medicinal plant if you're not absolutely sure about the intended use. If you use the wrong primrose, your headache might turn into a dizziness spell or convulsions!

When a flower isn't a flower: part 1

Species name: Bougainvillea spectabilis

Common name: bougainvillea, Napoleon, veranera, trinitaria (amongst others)

Location: Dominican Republic

Bougainvilleas are some of the most well known and well recognized tropical plants in the world. They originated from a relatively small band of South America, extending from Brazil west to Peru and south to Chile and Argentina. Depending on who you ask, there are between 4 and 18 species in the group (18 species is probably an over-estimation due to morphological variation displayed even in a single group of individuals, but I doubt there are only four species since diversity of plants in the tropics is so high). DNA sequence analysis definitely needs to be performed on this group to help not only with defining diversity, but also establishing if any of these populations (however isolated) are their own species and hence are in dire need of protection and conservation. One of the reasons why this is such a popular "resort plant" in tropical countries is because of its extreme ability to tolerate salt (it can tolerate being watered with seawater! That's salty!) it makes for an ideal ornamental species where salt spray (and periodic flooding due to storm surges) is common.

The "flowers" of the bougainvillea plant are great examples of how plants can entice animals into believing that they produce these large, showy flowers, but in reality produce small, barely noticeable flowers and fruit. The pink "petals" that many people believe to be the flowers aren't at all; they're just modified leaves containing pink pigments instead of green ones that act to attract pollinators (we call these bracts). The flowers themselves are the small white bits on the inside; there are usually three white flowers surrounded by three to six bracts. The bracts can be white, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, green, or any colour inbetween. The only colour of bougainvillea bract that I don't think exists is blue; feel free to correct me if you've ever seen a blue one! There are over 300 different varieties of bougainvillea sold as ornamental plants, so it wouldn't surprise me if it had been "invented". Not only have there been hundreds of cultivars and varieties created through selective breeding, but bougainvilleas also naturally hybridize in the wild. There is even a population of plants in Peru, once thought to be a distinct species, that is a hybrid of two commonly found species. What's unusual about this hybrid population isn't the fact that it's a population of hybrid plants, it's where the parental plants are located. And that's nowhere near this hybrid population. There's no documented evidence, either, that either of the parent plants of this hybrid ever existed in this area of Peru. So how did they get there? Is this evidence of "early gardening" by native Peruvians? Is this evidence for population reduction in both parental species of bougainvillea? Can the seeds really be carried that far? Is there an animal vector (or was there an animal vector) that eats the fruit to disperse the seeds that we don't know about? Some fascinating questions with (so far) no conclusive answers.

Other than the ornamental value, this plant has no other uses to humans. The sap of the plant to some people is highly irritating to the skin; in people who are highly sensitive to the sap the reaction can be as extreme as it is to poison ivy. Other people either don't react at all or react with a slight rash and a mild itching. Luckily, unlike with poison ivy, a cut portion of the stem must come in prolonged contact with the skin in order to cause a reaction. This means that you should only be worried if you have been given the task of pruning a patch of bougainvilleas; if you have, make sure you wear a long-sleeved shirt and gloves and you'll be fine. This is also a very popular plant to turn into a bonsai (although, a different species is often used; B. glabra). The bougainvillea is the national plant of Guam, as well as the regional flowers of regions in China, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, and the United States.

Stay tuned for part 2 of "When a flower isn't a flower" tomorrow, featuring one of the most commonly purchased plants for ornamental, indoor use.

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.

Colorado Blue Spruce

Species name: Picea pungens var. hoopsii

Common name: Hoopsii spruce, Hoopsii Colorado Blue spruce

Location: Ontario

I had wanted to post back-to-back blogs to contrast the difference between spruces and firs, since many people when they're first starting out at plant identification (me included) have a hard time telling them apart. I didn't get a chance to post a blog yesterday and I had a different blog planned for today, so I guess I'll just have to post two blogs today :)

The Colorado spruce, as I'm sure you can guess, is native to the alpine regions of Colorado in the United States. It has been transported all around the world by humans, favoured for its blueish tint to the needles at the tips of the branches. As the branch grows and the needles age, they lose their waxy frosting that gives them the blue tint, and turn green. The Colorado spruce is very intolerant to shade, and so the needles on the inside of the tree are shed as they become too shaded by branches above them. While the Colorado spruce is a popular Christmas tree, all spruces lose their needles when the tree dries out, so they can be very messy by the time it's time to compost the tree. The needles compared to fir trees, which don't lose their needles when dry, are also much sharper and not as nice to handle, and can be quite dangerous to small children with sensitive skin and to animals (compare the photos of the needles above to the needles in my blog post about the white fir HERE). Spruces also don't smell as wonderful as fir trees do; the typical "Christmas smell" that I think of when I think of Christmas is cinnamon, apples, the smell of fir trees, and a roasting turkey. Yum!

This variety of spruce tree is actually quite misleading when it comes to the "typical" form of spruces. It actually looks absolutely nothing like a typical Colorado spruce, and actually much more like a black spruce (which you can read all about HERE). Black spruces, except when young, have this type of characteristic shape; very dense branch growth towards the top of the tree that point almost straight outwards but with very short branches, then the longer branches towards the bottom of the tree are much longer, droop downwards, and are much more sparse compared to the top of the tree. The Colorado spruce, on the other hand, should be shaped almost like a pyramid with very dense branches throughout the length of the tree, and branches pointing nearly straight outwards. The Hoopsii spruce, a variety of the Colorado spruce, was selected by humans to have that drooping, very narrow growth habit.

As for the uses of the Colorado spruce, it is rarely used in the lumber or paper and pulp industry unless it is found growing in a stand of trees intended for pulping. It grows incredibly slowly and adds very little girth with each growing season, so is not very useful for lumber. The Navajo use the bark from the Colorado spruce as a medicinal item; it is steeped like a tea with other herbs to treat various medical conditions. The Colorado spruce is also the state tree of Utah and (of course) Colorado.