There's Rosemary, that's for Remembrance

Species name: Rosmarinus officinalis

Common name: rosemary

Location: teaching lab at Western

Rosemary is an incredibly unusual plant in the mint family (the Lamiaceae) because of its almost cactus-like lifestyle. The Latin name of this plant actually comes from its unusual ability to acquire nutrients in a hostile environment: "ros" for dew, and "marinus" for ocean. Not only is this plant incredibly salt-tolerant (with much of its native range in marine spray habitat), but it can acquire almost all nutrients it needs to sustain life from the air, where droplets of dew condense on the hairs and waxy coating of the leaves, where they are absorbed and used by the plant to make energy. In fact, rosemary is so drought-tolerant it can go without being watered for months. This makes me seriously wonder how I managed to kill my rosemary plant in a single month; something tells me I over-watered and should only have been misting it. It was one of those strange rosemary Christmas trees, so it might have also been root-bound. Yep, let's blame it on being root-bound. Then it's not my fault. :) Rosemary is native to the Mediterranean, where it still commonly grows in the wild. It is also a popular ornamental species, and some rosemary plants are hundreds of years old.

Rosemary is one of the most popular herbs to use in cooking, especially in meat dishes because it has such a distinctive flavour. In fact, what most people don't know about rosemary is that the flavour is best brought out of the herb when you "spank" it (for a refresher on why you might want to spank an herb, refer to my blog post about mint HERE) and then burn it. Yep, that's right. Burn it. One of the best ways to use rosemary is on barbecued meats where you poke some sprigs of rosemary into the meat and just let them singe and burn until the meat is cooked to desired done-ness. Take the burnt pieces out of the meat with some tongs before serving (or just eat it. Burnt rosemary won't kill you), and voila! Smoky rosemary-infused meat. Yum, yum. Rosemary also pairs really well with mustards, because the acidity in the mustard also brings out the flavour in the rosemary leaves. Interestingly enough, mustard is native to almost the same geographic region that rosemary occupies. There might be something to this mustard-rosemary pairing...

As the Latin name suggests, rosemary has been used for centuries (some people have argued for many millennia, but the evidence for rosemary use only dates back to about 3,000 years ago. Yeah, "only.") as a medicinal plant, mainly to improve memory. It wasn't just used to improve "brain memory," either, but also to improve muscle memory. After someone suffered a stroke in the Middle Ages, a salve of rosemary leaves ground into wine was applied to the site of muscle paralysis as it was believed that doing so would help the body "remember" how to move the paralyzed muscles. It probably didn't work very often, but at least you would smell good :) That type of concoction was also consumed orally to treat gout (it was most famously used in this manner to treat the Queen of Hungary Elisabeth of Poland in the 1300s). Don Quixote also used rosemary leaves in his miraculous balm of Fierabras, which was reported to heal anyone that drank it. This very likely had at least SOME effect on the body, as the secondary compounds of rosemary are highly antimicrobial. Back in the 1100s and 1200s, before the discovery of penicillin, any kind of wound that got an infection would almost certainly lead to death. By either drinking this highly antibacterial (and antifungal) beverage or applying it directly to the wound, it would help protect it from infection. For some wounds it would have been irrelevant as they would be severe enough to kill you anyway. But for other more minor wounds, it might have made the difference between life and death. It's always nice to know when some of the folklore of popular tales is actually biologically possible!

Because of its historical medicinal use in improving memory, rosemary sprigs also play a leading role in wedding and funeral traditions around the world. In funeral bouquets that are scattered on graves, rosemary serves as a sign of remembrance for the dead and a way of honouring their memory. Across much of Europe, rosemary is still incorporated into the wreathes in Remembrance Day ceremonies, and also in war commendation ceremonies (especially if these are to commemorate the brave acts of a soldier who died in battle). In wedding ceremonies, they represent remembrance of loved ones that passed before the time of the ceremony and also to remember the life the couple spent apart before they were united in marriage. This eventually caused the evolution of rosemary from an herb of remembrance into an herb of love, and now sprigs of rosemary are considered to mean love and good luck in marriage. The sprigs of rosemary in the bride's bouquet would be planted in the ground, and if they grew it would be a sign of good prosperity and good luck. If they didn't grow...well, I guess it sucks to be you. Hint: dip it in some rooting compound first and problem solved. See, there's always a way to coerce luck into working out in your favour. Just takes some work!

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.

King of the Kelp

Species name: "Laminaria" sp. (probably Saccharina latissima)

Common name: kelp, giant kelp, Devil's apron

Location: Nova Scotia

While not truly a plant, kelp is not only of great economic importance but also a great nuisance, especially if you like swimming or boating on the Atlantic coastline in cooler water. Kelp is actually brown algae (that broad term refers not just to members of the genera Laminaria and Saccharina, but also many other species in the group), in the kingdom Chromalveolata (formerly part of the Chromista).  Until recently, the species Saccharina latissima was considered a member of the Laminaria, but modern DNA sequencing paints a different picture.

Unlike a true plant it doesn't have roots to absorb nutrients from the seabed, but rather it absorbs its nutrients from the water through it's "leaf" or blade (not a true leaf, either). The "roots" that anchor the kelp to the sea floor are collectively termed the holdfast, and the "stem" (could be short or long, prominent or not depending on the species) leading up to the blade is called the stipe. The genus Laminaria occurs widely around the world in cold salty water, with their geographic range extending from Greenland all the way south to Cape Cod in North America, and in Europe from the north shores of Russia all the way south to the north of France. There are similar species to the one pictured above that occupy the same niche in the Southern hemisphere, with species ranging from the south tip of Argentina north towards Brazil, and also from South Africa up towards the Democratic Republic of Congo. The full length of this alga can reach up to 4 meters!

Commercially, this species is incredibly important worldwide for various reasons. In fact, you probably use an extract of this alga every day and don't realize it! Historically, this was our major source of iodine to make iodized salt, but that has been replaced with much cheaper methods of iodine isolation from living "green things". Historically it was also burned to make potash, which was used extensively in the glass-making industry. To some extent currently, but also largely historically, it was dried and ground and used as a fertilizer on agricultural fields. Today, we extract a compound from it we term an "alginate" (you can probably guess where that word comes from!) which is added to toothpastes and cosmetics as a binding and thickening agent. Rarely it's used in food (that's not to say it's not edible, it's just not the thickener of choice), but it is starting to make appearances in the vegan food industry. In China and Japan, this is the main ingredient in the soup stock used to make dashi.