This plant has a few dirty little secrets

Species name: Gossypium spp.

Common name: cotton

Location: teaching lab at Western (first 6 images) and Samana, Dominican Republic (last 2 images)

Cotton is probably one of the most well-known plant products and the single most important plant fibre around the world, yet few people would recognize cotton growing in plant form, let alone if none of the "bolls" (more on that later) were present. Cotton plants are actually becoming more and more popular as ornamental species around the world because of their beautiful flowers which come in a huge variety of colours and sizes (partially dependent on species, but also on cultivar). Most back-yard gardeners would be lucky to end up with actual cotton seeds covered in fibres growing on their plant; cotton crops are the single most susceptible agricultural or horticultural crop to diseases and pests of all kinds: viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, and even competition by other plants. As I'm sure you can assume now, the crop that requires the most "-icides" in the world is cotton: herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. This makes cotton growing very, very detrimental to the environment, and there are some interesting side-effects to this type of spraying that I'll talk about later in this blog.

There are four main species of cotton grown around the world, and each one is selected for different reasons. Believe it or not, all four of the commercially cultivated cotton species are now at risk of becoming endangered in the wild because of over-harvesting. For a crop we grow so much of, that's almost hard to believe! Gossypium hirsutum, otherwise known as upland cotton or Mexican cotton, is native to Central and South America and represents 95% of cotton cultivation in the United States (about 80-90% of cotton cultivation worldwide). Gossypium barbadense, also known as extra-long staple cotton, is native to tropical South America and is highly sought-after for creating fine cotton garments and cotton cloth (Egyptian cotton and Sea Island cotton are almost always derived from this species). Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to grow because it requires high amounts of humidity in the air, high amounts of rainfall, and full sun to grow properly. This combination is rare in cotton-producing countries; where there is a high amount of rainfall the temperature isn't optimal, and where the temperature is optimal it is very dry. These factors contribute to why this species only accounts for about 8% of worldwide cotton production. Gossypium arboreum, tree cotton, is native to India, Pakistan, and surrounding areas of the Old World. This species was previously used to make fine textiles for traditional garments, but because of its difficulty in harvesting the cotton fibres (there's a reason why it's called tree cotton!) is now only accounts for less than 2% of the world's cotton production. It is still grown in cultivation in some areas in India for its traditional purposes. The last species used as an agricultural crop is Gossypium herbaceum, Levant cotton, is native to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. While only accounting for less than 2% of the world's cotton production, it was the first cotton species to be represented in art form. It was first noticed by European traveler Sir John Mandeville, who described the growth of the plant as producing a melon-like fruit that when planted grew sheep. I couldn't make this up if I tried. He also drew exactly that: a melon in the ground with roots coming off of it, and the plant above it with a giant sheep growing on top. Granted, this was the 14th century and they didn't know much about basic biology back then, but still. Sheep don't grow on cotton trees! It wasn't until the 1800s that this story was officially deemed a fable; up until then there were actually Europeans that traveled to Arabia and sub-Saharan Africa in search of sheep growing on trees. A bit ridiculous when you look back!

Cotton fibres and the cotton seeds are produced in structures that are commonly termed the "cotton boll." These bolls contain anywhere from four to seven seeds, depending on the species. Each seed is covered in a dense layer of very short hairs called cotton lint, and then that is covered in a thick layer (or thin layer, depending on the species) of very long hairs called cotton linters. When we harvest the cotton from the plant, there is a machine that all of the cotton bolls are fed into that has razor blades that rotate very quickly, literally "shaving" the cotton seed of its fibres. The fibres are shaken, which eventually separates the lint from the linters and the linters are spun into long threads that can be used to make fabric. The longer the linters the stronger and smoother the thread. So what happens to all the rest of the "stuff"? Well, there's definitely a dirty side of cotton production, and that is the sheer amount of chemicals applied to most cotton fields. When the seeds and the plant flesh enclosing the cotton seeds are tested for toxic chemical levels, they are found to be containing dangerous chemicals at levels that are even too high to feed to pigs. This is a shame, because cotton seeds are actually incredibly nutritious, and being able to feed cotton by-products to animals would be a great use of these plant wastes! Today, most of it is either composted or burned. G. hirsutum is one of the species of cotton used most often to produce cottonseed oil, which is often produced from organic or nearly-organic cotton. This type of cotton cultivation results in a severely reduced yield of cotton fibres due to the cotton boll weevil, which uses the flesh around young cotton seeds as its primary food source. This doesn't harm the development of the seed (much), but does severely reduce the amount of protective covering the seed can produce (aka the seed hairs or the cotton fibres).

Aside from the fibre use and the new-found ornamental use that cotton plants have, they have also been used for centuries as a medicinal species. In both South America and in Africa, the leaves of the plant are pounded and ground into a paste and applied to the skin to treat hypertension and joint pain. The ground leaves can also be consumed to treat delayed or irregular menstruation. There is, actually, a high likelihood that this second use would be incredibly effective. Most of the time, especially before the advent of contraceptives, a delayed or irregular menstrual cycle is the result of pregnancy. One of the chemicals contained in cotton leaves (as well as raw cotton seeds and the tissues surrounding the cotton seeds) is called gossypol and it is a highly toxic chemical to all animals with only one stomach (like humans and pigs; cows are ruminants and so are, for some reason, immune to this chemical). The way that this plant is most toxic is as an abortifacient, or an abortion-inducing chemical.

Cotton production does have a dirty little secret in American history, and that is the use of African slaves. People were shipped over to the United States to spend all daylight hours picking cotton in the fields with little to no rest, and were paid meagre wages (if at all). The only reason why the United States is a major cotton producer today is because of their slave use: the more slaves you have, the more cotton you can produce. In fact, cotton production was the single most important driving factor of the importing of African people to the United States. Granted, cotton is no longer cultivated that way today (thank goodness!) and instead is part of a mechanized process. I often wonder what types of crops would be grown in the southern United States if the slave trade had never existed. Would they be as important in the cotton industry? What about peanuts? Or soybeans? All of these crops required a large amount of human input to grow, and so the only reason why they were ever grown is because of the opportunity to use slave labor. Interesting to think how such events in human history (and not just in the United States, but anywhere in the world where people are brought in to perform manual labor and especially farming) can drastically change the product exports from a country!

Cotton is also an important fibre crop in the paper-making industry. Paper doesn't require wood pulp in order to stick together; it can be made perfectly well from an old pair of jeans blended into a very fine pulp! Cotton fibre paper, sometimes referred to as "rag bond" (but not true rag bond as that's made out of linen or flax fibres), is also called archival-quality paper as it strongly resists decay. For every percentage point of cotton fibres in the pulp that goes into making the paper, an extra 1-5 years is added onto the life of the paper. The paper used for printing theses (which my monstrosity of a PhD thesis will be printed on and permanently bound one day) is 95% cotton fibres, so that adds an extra 95-475 years of life to my thesis. I'll have to provide explicit details in my will that once I die someone I know will go back and visit my thesis every few years between 95 and 475 years after I have it printed to see how long it takes before the pages fall apart. A morbid experiment, but could be a fun one!

The "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary," or the Scythian Lamb, as depicted by Sir John Mandeville (left) and Henry Lee (right) (images both from Wikipedia).

A monster looms in the bluebells...

Species name: Taraxacum officinale

Common name: dandelion

Location: Ontario

Feeling like you have deja vu? That might be because I've already blogged about dandelions before, but they were regular ordinary dandelions. This one is special! If you'd like to read my last blog about dandelions and learn a whole bunch of cool stuff about dandelions in general, you can do so HERE.

Dandelions are most likely native to Eurasia, but there's a significant debate about their origins. There have even been a few people to suggest that the true dandelion that carries this species name is only found in North America, and that there's a separate species in Europe. The Europeans always feel they have to be special... :) Regardless of the true species name, almost all dandelions are created equal: they flower in the spring when you're just trying to get your grass looking good again, most people hate them, they have taproots that are nearly impossible to get out of the ground unless you're weeding after a heavy downpour and the ground is wet (if you've never weeded after it has rained, give it a try. You'll thank me later. You're welcome), they have bright yellow flowers that turn into fluffy seed heads, and no matter what kind of biological warfare you use on them the always come back. You know, typical boring (some might say ugly, but I rather like them) dandelions.

Except this one!

Instead of just talking about why dandelions are cool, I wanted to talk about why THIS dandelion is cool. You can see right away from the top image, highlighted in the bottom two images, that the flower head of this particular plant doesn't look like a typical dandelion plant. This phenomenon is called "fasciation", and so this dandelion plant is fasciated. This means that all of the flower heads that would have developed into their own flower under normal conditions have, for some reason, fused together and created a mutant giant flower head (caused by the fusion of many separate meristems at the end of the inflorescence stalks). This, to me, is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the plant world, and has been documented in over 100 species of plants. The best part? No one has any idea why this happens in any given plant. There are lots of ideas of why this might happen in general: exposure to radiation, attack of a virus, exposure to low doses of specific chemicals (like 2,4-D, or Roundup, for example), mechanical disturbance, insect damage, or genetic mutations. But could anyone tell you why THIS PLANT became fasciated? As of our current knowledge, no. You could definitely speculate and come up with the most likely scenario but you would never be 100% sure (and there are likely other reasons why this happens that are currently undocumented). Normally this phenomenon is incredibly rare in the plant world, and to see it would be a real treat...except dandelions. Apparently dandelions do this all the time! Silly plants. The speculation here is that in this plant species it is more than likely pre-determined by genetic mutations that can be passed on through the seeds, but also exposure to common pesticides like 2,4-D also play a role (and dandelions are always on the end of chemical attacks, it seems!). Unfortunately, someone ripped this plant out of the ground (and by someone, I mean the people that do grounds maintenance on campus) before it had a chance to finish flowering and turn to seed. I would have loved to continue taking pictures of the flower development and collect some seeds to see if I could grow a new fasciated dandelion! Yes, I know what's coming. "You know you're a nerd when..." :) Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I would have done it in the greenhouses at school!

Have you ever seen a fasciated plant? Now that I know it exists, I saw the remains of a fasciated tulip growing in a bed on campus. Fascinating fasciation!

EDIT: I guess I should mention that this phenomenon isn't just restricted to the plant world; it also happens in fungi. Next time you're in the grocery store and have some time to kill, go pick through the bin of shiitake mushrooms. I bet you'll find a mushroom with a single squashed-looking stalk with two caps on the top. Fasciated shiitakes are quite common; I guess that makes the shiitake the dandelion of the fungus world!

Pineapples don't grow on trees!

Today, being April 1st and all, I was going to photoshop two plants together and then "publish" a new species on my blog. Come up with a really creative name, pretend it has some ridiculous medicinal quality that I discovered while experimenting on my cat, and describe its ability to not only transport itself from one place to another by its roots, moving through sandy soil, but also that when the flowers open it moos like a cow. Yeah, big plans. But then you know what? I remembered I didn't have a clue how to use photoshop properly. Maybe I'll learn in time for next year's April Fools :)

Until then, 365 days from now, you can enjoy a (100% true) blog about...pineapples!

Species name: Ananas comosus

Common name: pineapple

Location: Dominican Republic

Pineapples. What to say about pinapples?! Well, the first thing to mention is that they do not grow on trees (you can read all about pineapple-like trees HERE). Pineapples are monocots; they don't have the ability to form wood and so cannot be a tree. Plus, from the first picture you should be able to see that they're more like a shrubby, spiky, rather dangerous-looking plant. This observation would be completely true; some of the people that were on the safari excursion with my mom and myself came away from the "farm tour" with scratches all over their legs from brushing up against pineapple plants. The leaves have razor-sharp spines all along both sides and they can slice through skin with the very lightest of pressure. Definitely a plant to stay away from unless you're wearing pants!

Pineapple plants are native to South America, at least that is the current school of thought. Very little is known about the actual domestication of pineapples, nor what the likely ancestor of a domesticated pineapple actually looks like. What is known is that the domesticated pineapple was introduced to the Philippines and to Hawaii very early on, likely before the days of Marco Polo and the Dark Ages. It seems as if no one could quite figure out how to propagate them, and they were eliminated from the agricultural crops of these locations until their re-introduction. It is said that pineapples were re-introduced in the 1500s to Hawaii by the Spanish, but this is widely disputed. We do know that they were cultivated there by 1720 in "pineapple pits", and a widespread re-introduction in the early 1800s caused them to be (and still are) one of Hawaii's most important export crops beginning in the late 1800s. In the Philippines, it is believed they were introduced sometime in the early 1800s, probably by the same Spanish ship that introduced them to Hawaii, and they have become a staple in rural Filipino life. The leaves contain very strong fibres with a very unusual texture (almost like silk when you run your hand along a garment in one direction and feeling like burlap in the other), and this has been used to make traditional clothing for at least two centuries. Now, pineapples are cultivated in the Philippines (mostly just exported to other areas in Asia and in Australia/New Zealand), Costa Rica (where Del Monte produces all of its pineapples after the breakup of the Pineapple Research Institute in Hawaii), the United States (where Dole still grows a lot of its pineapples), Thailand, and Indonesia.

Pineapples carry a lot of controversy, especially with the methods used to cultivate them. Pineapples are all clones of each other; that's the only way you can ensure the fruit obtained will be the same sweet, juicy pineapple consumers have come to love and expect when they buy pineapples. Unfortunately, whenever you clone a plant you make it unable to evolve resistance to pathogens, and pineapples today are attacked on a daily basis by fungi, bacteria and viruses that have evolved virulence genes against the plants. In order to fight disease, this means pineapple plantations must be sprayed, sometimes upwards of 40 times over the time of fruit development (which is only 6 months), just to prevent disease. The chemicals sprayed on pineapple plantations are incredibly dangerous to the health of the workers on the plantations: every chemical sprayed is carcinogenic, many are organophosphates which destroy the environment and can affect brain development in fetuses, and some are hormone disruptors which can have adverse effects on child development (they have been linked to everything from autism to attention deficit disorder to spontaneous miscarriage, brain cancer and leukemia). These chemicals aren't just dangerous for the health of the workers that spray the fields and work in the fields all day; these chemicals are leached into the drinking water supply and are consumed downstream by everyone in surrounding villages. This is a real problem, and there have been many lawsuits filed against both Dole and Del Monte along with encouragement to solve this problem by working harder to develop different cultivars that are disease resistant. There is some effort underway in pineapple biotechnology, but because of the "bad rap" that genetically modified food has, none of these products have made it to widespread cultivation. Remember, too, that if a chemical is sprayed onto the surface of a food item, it is more than likely incorporated in some way (however large or small) into the food that is consumed. Some food for thought (pun intended).

Pineapple fruit develops in a very unusual way; a way that is not shared with any other fruit commonly consumed worldwide. It is called a "multiple" fruit, because it is a single fruit made from multiple flowers. The entire inflorescence of the pineapple goes into making a single fruit! Each flower must be pollinated, usually by bees or hummingbirds, and then all at the same time the flowers mature into the pineapple. The actual pollination process can take from 20 to 24 months! That's two years just to get the beginning of a pineapple fruit. That gives me a whole new appreciation for my pineapple. After all of the flowers have been pollinated, the fruit takes another six months to become fully mature. In the third picture, you can see some of the flowers emerging from the inflorescence. Unfortunately, this entire process is actually detrimental to pineapple production since flower pollination implies seed production. No one wants to be eating seeds in their pineapple! For this reason, pollinators of the pineapple plants have been banned from import by the Hawaiian islands, to prevent unwanted seed development. If no pollination occurs, the fruit still develops but just no seeds are formed. The pineapple is said to be a "mathematical" fruit; the flowers are arranged in two spirals around the inflorescence stalk, with one spiral going each direction. If you count the number of flowers in a spiral one direction it's 8, and the other is 13. This means that the pineapple is an example of a fruit in nature that displays the Fibonacci number sequence. Neat!

The dense-leaved asparagus

Species name: Asparagus densiflorus

Common name: asparagus fern

Location: UWO Greenhouse

Like many common names, the common name for Asparagus densiflorus is incredibly misleading as it is not a fern. It probably gets the common name due to its feather-like foliage, and in some cultivars it does greatly resemble a fern (having been bred for short branches instead of the 50 cm or larger branches that can occur in the wild species). The asparagus fern is native to Africa, in a region from Mozambique south to South Africa. Both this plant and a very close relative, A. aethiopicus, are very common greenhouse plants, houseplants, and landscaping plants. Contrary to popular belief, the asparagus fern is not invasive in the southern United States, where it can survive being planted outdoors year round. It is unfortunately commonly mistaken for other close relatives, which ARE invasive and can be a menace to native flora due to the incredible network of underground rhizomes from which the upright stems grow. Once established, certain Asparagus species can be darn near impossible to eradicate, and most are resistant to RoundUp (remember that RoundUp is a broadleaf defoliant; Asparagus is a monocot and not a broadleaf plant so it should not be surprising that it is largely unaffected by this common herbicide!).

The main use of this plant and its very close relatives is as greenery in floral arrangements. Any kind of feathery green foliage that you get when you buy flower bouquets are probably the "fluffy" cultivars of A. densiflorus or A. plumosus.

Like many Asparagus species, this plant can have very sharp spines along its stem which can wreak havoc on clothing and skin. It produces white to pink flowers which mature into red fruit; the juices from the fruit are toxic and so should not be consumed. When the leaves are crushed they can also irritate the skin in much the same way that poison ivy does, but the irritation is much shorter lived (only about 20-30 minutes or so). Despite being relatively benign to humans, consuming any part of this plant will kill a dog or a cat, so if you do grow it as a house plant make sure your animals stay away from it!

It must be spring when the grass turns golden

Species name: Taraxacum officinale

Common name: dandelion

Location: Ontario

This probably isn't the average person's idea of a "beautiful plant", especially if you own your own home, but they play a pretty significant role in the biology of North American urban ecosystems.

The origins of dandelions aren't entirely clear, but they're believed to have originated in Europe, coming to North America many hundred years ago. The number of groups that the common name "dandelion" refers to varies depending on the authority (70 microspecies according to Rothmaler, 3 subspecies according to Barnes and friends). The biology of these plants is similar to the last weed of the blog, garlic mustard, except that it is not a biennial but an annual plant. Anyone who has ever had to pull dandelions knows all about them having a taproot, or a very fleshy root that extends down into the soil. If you don't remove the taproot when removing the plant, it can use these energy stores to regrow anew, and your problem with lawn weeds never goes away. Annual plants are ones that complete their life cycle in one growing season or less (and in this case, less). Dandelions can often have multiple growing seasons in a year (one plant's seed will germinate and produce a new flower and new seed before the end of the growing season), which contributes to their success as a weed. Another major contribution to their success is human activity. What most people don't know about dandelions is that they actually thrive in highly disturbed areas. When you mow your lawn once a week, you are creating a highly disturbed environment. By keeping grass shorter than it likes being (aesthetics say that grass should be 3-4 cm in length, biology says that grass should be 5-7 cm in length), you are also creating the ideal growth and reproduction conditions for dandelions. They can very quickly grow to be taller than the grass, monopolizing the light resources and growing faster than what grass can control. People who have well-manicured lawns with large inputs of artificial fertilizers will always have more dandelion growth than those that don't. Just one example of plants exploiting humans to further their reproductive goals.

One other major way that dandelions contribute to changing urban ecosystems is through spraying. Recently in Ontario the government just passed a law saying that you cannot spray using chemical pesticides for aesthetic purposes on urban lawns (except where revenue is acquired through their maintenance, like with the case of golf courses) due to the health hazards that pesticides have. Whether or not pesticides in the concentrations children are exposed to from a lawn are harmful or not is somewhat beside the point (not that I'm against children, but the major effect that pesticides were having was not on the youngest human members of the Earth in the formula that we used them in North America). The major reason why this was so pivotal for ecosystems in general is because now we can no longer force the input of these toxins into the groundwater, which impacts species further down the line. The type of pesticides used were called broadleaf defoliants, and were chemically based on Agent Orange (a chemical used in warfare in the Vietnam War). These would selectively kill any plant with broad leaves, while leaving the grass (which has narrow leaves) alone. Great for a lawn, but not so great for natural ecosystems affected by the groundwater runoff from our lawns.

Has the banning of commercial "non-organic" pesticides for aesthetic use in urban systems had any effect? So far I think it's hard to tell. There have definitely been changes in plant communities previously affected by large amounts of urban runoff, but have those changes been because of concerted conservation and rehabilitation efforts, or because of our changing pesticide use? Only time will tell.