Welcome back to another episode of lost in the farmer’s market. This
will be the first episode of August and of course as you gardeners out there
already know the month of august tends to bring some difficulty in maintenance
and productivity. Normally the usually ample rain diminishes; the humidity
level rises and we have some form of drought. Additionally all the biting
insects we loathe are up and running and that makes maintaining our gardens and
crops less than pleasurable. For those of you with rain catchment systems, this
is the time of year in which you might have to force-fill the system with municipal
water using the overflow valve but in reverse.
With that in mind I always recommend increasing the effort to irrigate,
and the strength and frequency that you fertilize. Obviously certain
fertilizers cannot be increased in frequency so it’s wiser to use more than one
type to put back the nutrients that you have depleted in the last three months
to keep your crops going. If you’re daring, in the third week of August you can
start some of your less heat-sensitive cold season crops so that they get a
head start when the temperatures drop off in mid-to late September. The rest
can be started at the beginning of September. But the aforementioned isn’t the
main topic of this post, instead today we will be discussing adaptation and
artificial selection. It’s no secret that we live in a age of blind
sensationalism. You often hear people condemning certain terms or misusing terms
without having a keen understanding of what they mean and this leads to a
financial windfall for those who make a living exploiting those who don’t dare
do the research from fair and unbiased sources. This is a two-part discussion,
and in this part I’m going to open the discussion with some direct agricultural
examples and in part two I’m going to take aim at portions of the Holistic/supplement/panacea
industry who are flat falsifying information.
In the business of agriculture I often hear people talk about what is
and is not natural, often these conversations are spurred by personal agendas, beliefs
or sometimes bad information. More often than not it comes from a serious misunderstanding
of terminology, someone hears that say hybrids are the same as GMO, and either
fails to verify that accepting it as a fact because a certain person said so.
Or the same person poorly researches it and does not even consider the sources
he or she uses to research might be biased or poorly researched themselves.
Occasionally this cumulates in the form of what I like to call “Misguided Conservation”
which is when an individual upon hearing something like the fact that there are
no native stands of Aloe vera in the wild begins to get a bit sad and starts
talking about how terrible the human race is. The problem is this is a knee-jerk
reaction to a fact that while true does not tell the whole story. Using the
same example, yes the true medicinal Aloe, is extinct in its native habitat,
but because of human activity aloe has a worldwide distribution in climates and
places it normally would have no chance of getting to or surviving in. It is
safe to say that there are more Aloe vera plants in cultivation now then there ever
were in nature. This is actually an example of mutually beneficial symbiosis,
we cultivate and protect the Aloe and it provides us with health benefits from its
gel and beauty from its blooms.
We both win in the above case and everyone’s happy. But sometimes
mutual benefit isn’t so obvious when you start talking artificial selection for
traits and asexual reproduction. In terms of agriculture you have the common
fig which at some point in the past gained the ability to produce fruit without
a pollinator which didn’t benefit the fig, but when humans noticed we started
taking cuttings and spreading the fig’s range. It’s clear there are far more fig
bushes in more places than at any time in prior history and all because we are
helping the plants along to success and expansion while they feed us. But take
the case of a flatly non-advantageous artificial section for a house plant.
Below you will see an image of a ‘Marble Queen’ devils ivy plant.
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| Epipremnum aureum – Pothos, “Marble Queen” |
If you know nothing about the houseplant commonly called devil’s Ivy,
know that traditionally you will see it sold in its normal green-only foliage
form. As a pure green plant it is vigorous and its vines can easily grow to be
several feet long in a growing season. It is rare to see a bloom on a devil’s
ivy plant but we grow it for its easy care, and air purifying ability. Marble queen
is the least common variety seen in stores for sale because it is the exact
opposite of the normal green form in that it is slow growing, seemingly not
very vigorous and yet its foliage is almost pure white and quite striking.
There is no doubt that marble queen likely purifies air too but it’s chief limitation
is that the white foliage means a lack of chlorophyll, which means in nature it
might have died out if someone hadn’t come along and taken a cutting. Here we
have a species that only exists in cultivation and if put in the wild has a
limited chance to survive assuming that it does not revert to some version of
the pure green form. In this case it is not exactly mutual symbiosis because
the plant needs up to exist in its current form than we need it. This is called
benign symbiosis, where we are doing the work and receiving less benefit from
the plant in question. Technically it’s not taking advantage of us and we aren’t
of it but we are doing more to keep it alive. Below is an example of a middle
ground plant, the variegated form of heart leaf philodendron in this case is
mostly some shade of green with splotches of yellow. This mutation is at best a
moderate to mild limitation to the plant, which is attractive to the eye, and
yet it’s vigorous enough, and still cleans the air.
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| Philodendron hederaceum PPI12956 – Philodendron “Brazil” |
The interesting part is that variegation in these shades isn’t a
limiting factor to this house plant. It can still photosynthesize quite well
and most of its vigor and speed of growth is retained. This plant ‘Brazil’ in
this case has a 50-50 chance of surviving in an acceptable wild climate because
it’s not radically out of place in form or shape. Its variegation is not a
great hindrance like with Marble Queen, and it stands a chance to ‘revert’ to a
green form. In the landscape we often see reversion in variegated shrubs such
as euonymus where a previously variegated shrub suddenly has a more vigorous
green-leafed branch or shoot appear in the middle or side of the shrub. In a
cultivated setting the problem is that if we do not remove the shoot early, it
will outgrow the rest of the plant, choke out the variegated parts and the shrub
will become all-green in short order. Below we have a plain green Heart Leaf Philodendron, it along with the
Swiss Cheese Plant are the two most vigorous vine forming house plants in my
collection.
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| Philodendron hederaceum – Heart Leaf Philodendron |
This again is because they are in a natural form with no impediments to
worry about except if or if not I remember to water them. Interestingly
Philodendrons have a unusual mechanism for protecting themselves from overwatering,
as they can exude excess water from their leaf tips. I do not know if this is a
surviving trait from the wild or something that was dormant and emerged to
counter household cultivation and low humidity. However it is darn cool to see
during the winter and the water droplets are potable amazingly, perhaps in the future
someone will cultivate a philodendron water filtration plant, who knows? But I
will close this post with two pictures from the field.
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| The toad is trying to bury itself in the soil in the pot which is just plain hilarious....epic amphibian FAIL! |
I’ve said before that during the summer I encounter a large number of
toads due to a nearby water feature in the neighborhood. This one got on the
patio somehow and has been camping out in potted plants.
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| Cycas revoluta – King Sago Palm |
This is a mature sago palm at my mother’s house. The strange brown
structure is a male cone which indicates it is a male plant and mature. This
means the palm is between 15 and 20 years old and unfortunately there is no way
to tell which gender a sago palm is until they’re nearly two decades old or you
have received a gender-verified cutting like they do with Ginko Biloba trees. Cycads are a largely extinct species of pseudo coniferous
plants that had their heyday during the Jurassic period. Much like the ginko
they are living fossils and due to cultivation at least the sago palm has a
range that almost matches it’s prior one. If you’ve heard of Tulip mania, there
once was a Cycad mania where specimens could fetch prices of several million,
this lead to poaching of wild specimens and ecological decline of the species
in the wild. Some of the rare specimens in their native habitats in parts of South
Africa are protected by fences and armed guards. Which leads to a modern moral
to this post; ‘Should there be another Plant Mania; we can be sure that the
plants won’t be thrilled about it.’
