Either you love stems, or you hate pandas

 Preface

 This is the third in my "botany" series of short-essays. It was written as an introduction to a lesson on stems as part of the Introduction to Botany lab I was the instructor for at UNBSJ back in 2011. Enjoy!

Either you love stems, or you hate pandas    

           Plant stems are one of those things that we tend to take for granted on a day to day basis.  We may think of them as the boring part of the plant – they are not as pretty as flowers or leaves, they lack the mystery and intrigue of roots, and if you try to think of the last time you ate one, well, it can be difficult to remember.  It’s not that they aren’t important, obviously we couldn’t have the delicious fruits and vegetables, the beautiful flowers, or shady leaves without the stem.  They’re kinda like the offensive lineman of a football game – absolutely necessary, because the quarterback would be immediately sacked and the team would lose without them, but they don’t do much other than stand there and provide support for the rest of the team (plant).  This analogy is true in that stems are overlooked, but they are probably more interesting and important than you think.  Like roots, stems can be aerial, underground, or aquatic, and like roots, we eat them in copious amounts. 

            In fact, one of the most important crops in the world is a stem - the sugar cane; if you had cereal for breakfast this morning, jam on your toast, or something sweet in your coffee, chances are you ate some sugar cane.  If you had a thanksgiving dinner this past weekend, chances are you ate some potatoes or yams – both modified underground stems (tubers).  A couple of things we had in the lab last week alongside the roots, like arrowroot cookies and sarsaparilla, are actually from modified underground stems called rhizomes.  Ginger is a stem – and I ask you, where would Asian food be without ginger?!!  Curries, stir-frys, and sushi would be soooo bland.  Asparagus spears, artichoke hearts, and water chestnuts are examples of delicious stems too. 

            Of course, all of the wood we use for building houses, furniture, boats, and baseball bats is also from the stem – although we’ll talk more about wood and other secondary growth products in the next lab. 

            Bamboo is another stem of incredible importance – not only is it used as a building material, fibre for paper products, and food (bamboo shoots), but it grows quickly and readily in warm climates, helping to meet the great demand for these products.  PLUS, it is the primary food of the endangered and incredibly cute giant panda. 

So, in conclusion, if you think stems are boring or stupid, we can only assume you don’t like to eat candy or yummy food, you live in a concrete house with plastic furniture, and probably hate pandas. 

The root of the problem

Preface

 This is the second in my "botany" series of short-essays. It was written as an introduction to a lesson on roots as part of the Introduction to Botany lab I was the instructor for at UNBSJ back in 2011. Enjoy!

The root of the problem

Root vegetables may not be the most abundant, most nutritional, or most valuable crops around; the ratio of protein to carbohydrates is often quite small, they cost more to grow than many grasses, and they tend not to have as many nutrients and vitamins as fruits or legumes.  They do, however, have their place as historically and traditionally important foods and products.  Here are a couple of examples I came across.  (Can you add any more?)

As I was preparing for the ‘root lab’, I came across an interesting excerpt in one of my text-books on the significance of one particular root, the sugar beet, in conflicts between world powers.  The sugar beet is actually the same species as the dark purple ones we see more commonly, but has achieved much higher sugar content through selective breeding.  Apparently, the sugar beet was developed by plant breeders in Germany and France during Britain’s naval blockade in the late eighteenth century, as a way of overcoming the loss of imported sugar from tropical locations that could grow sugar cane.  Sugar beets were Napoleon’s way of stickin’ it to the King of England.  It’s kind of like when as a child you get sent to your room for bad behaviour, but end up finding plenty of things to do in there anyways. 

The second time sugar beets came to the forefront of world politics was during the cold war era, when suddenly the U.S.A. didn’t like Cuba so much any more.  Ironically, Cuba had previously supplied the majority of the U.S.A.’s sugar, so the American government really shot themselves in the foot with that one.  This ended up working out well for American farmers though, because sugar beet production went up exponentially during that time.  Of course, with the country that bought the majority of their exported sugar no longer doing so, Cuba suddenly had more sugar than money, so their communist allies in northern Europe had to step in and buy some sugar – even though northern Europe had no shortage of the stuff with ample sugar-beet production already in place.  I wonder what the dental health of Russians from that time was like with all that extra sugar in their diet… 

            But of course, world politics have involved roots in many more forms that just that of the sugar beet.  Until recently in North America, tobacco production was one of the most financially lucrative (and environmentally damaging) forms of agriculture around.  The political importance of tobacco lies in its financial support for (and some would say control over) election campaigns, national spending priorities, and international trade.  It still is a major and growing industry in many other places around the world.  Of course, the product itself is a leaf, but the nicotine that accumulates in the leaves is produced in the roots of the plant, and without that nicotine (which is what causes addiction), tobacco markets would be a mere shadow of what they are today. 

             

On flowers

Preface

 This is the first in my "botany" series of short-essays. It was written as an introduction to a lesson on flowers as part of the Introduction to Botany lab I was the instructor for at UNBSJ back in 2011. Enjoy!

On flowers –

 A favourite joke of botanists when teaching about flowers is to poke fun at our human tendency to convey so much meaning by the passing of plant reproductive organs from one person to the next.  And yet, despite the dozens of students who have giggled along with them at the apparent silliness of the whole thing, we still grow, pick, buy, and sell flowers on a regular basis.  We give or receive flowers when we are sick, when we accomplish something important, when we are in love – in a way, the passing of flowers represents a language unto itself, one that has been used since before the time of the ancient Greeks – but why do we give flowers? 

There’s no question that many flowers are beautiful; they have evolved as the perfect organs of attraction.  Vibrant purples, pinks, oranges, yellows, and reds show up against a sea of green leaves like little bulls-eyes on a target for insect and avian pollinators.  The sweet fragrances dance through the air to tickle our noses just as surely as they do the chemoreceptive antennae of a honey-bee.  Not all are so attractive mind-you; some are barely different from the stem of the plant, while others smell like rotting flesh (don’t worry, we couldn’t find any of those flowers).  But in general, I think we are so attracted to flowers because they are plant reproductive parts.  They are sexual, by definition, and as we all know from the media we are exposed to on a daily basis, sex sells.  This combination of inherent sexuality with vibrance, fragrance (which share commonalities with pheromones of humans in some cases), and soft textures has made flowers the perfect metaphor for human sexuality – such metaphors have become the subject of songs, of poems, and of art in general.  For example, in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, he wrote:

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

Now, the flower’s purpose in being attractive is, of course, to benefit the process of pollination – an exchange of genetic information that increases the fitness of subsequent generations.  In a way, the human attachment to flowers is itself serving the purpose of these flowers in ways far beyond their original intent – they are produced in vast quantities, shipped around the world, and bred in ways that could never happen naturally (witness the rose itself).  You have to wonder, are we using the flowers, or are the flowers using us?  How often do we find ourselves marked by Cupid’s bolt, so that no sooner than we can say “environmentally deplorable intensive agriculture”, we are handing over $40 for a dozen roses?  Or in an effort to make a hospital room of our loved one less stifling, we purchase a delightful bouquet of lilies and asters?  Would we be spending so much of our hard-earned money if there was no benefit to doing so?  Well, the flowers may very well be taking advantage of our susceptibility to sex in advertising in a way that furthers their own populations, but I would argue that we use flowers to increase our own fitness as well. 

            I like flowers; I walk a little slower when I pass by a garden filled with Alyssum in the summer because it’s such a pleasant surprise, and I have accumulated many photos over the years of wildflowers with morning dew-drops, colourful pollinators, and stunning backdrops.  There is something soothing in the act of admiring a flower - there is probably even a direct neural-physiological response to such positive stimuli, such as the release of dopamine.  When I give flowers to someone else, it’s because I want those same feelings to be shared by the recipient.  From a psychological perspective, this may be a form of environmental manipulation, with an unarticulated goal – to have the pleasant feelings reciprocated in some way.  The hoped-for result may be favour over your peers or colleagues in a formal setting (e.g., being noticed in a positive way by those who have the power to promote you), or a future reciprocation of love or romance (perhaps even a chance to reproduce).  Either way, we are increasing our own fitness from an evolutionary perspective.  A gift of flowers may not be a signed contract, but the potential is certainly there for the giver to benefit as much as the recipient.  From an evolutionary perspective, both humans and flowers are benefiting from this relationship.

            What do you think?