#plant sciences

[stone-cold-groove]

Your summer reading list: Natural History of Vacant Lots - 1987.

[slugzill4]

sunflower stem cross section with TBO dye

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[mangalayatan2jabalpur-blog]

Unlock Your B.Sc. (Hons) in Horticulture at Mangalayatan University

Pursue your B.Sc. (Hons) in Horticulture at Mangalayatan University, Jabalpur, and gain hands-on expertise in sustainable agriculture, plant sciences, and modern horticultural techniques. Build a thriving career with our industry-relevant curriculum and experienced faculty.

ADMISSION HELPLINE:

Call/WhatsApp: +91-8252-300-300, 8252 200 200

Email: info@mangalayatan.ac.in

[jojoturnip]

To plant a garden is to believe in the future. To preserve the gardens of our world is to prepare for its uncertain future.

Please send your love to Duke Herbarium's professors, staff, and students during this trying time. Follow them on Insta @bluedevil.herbarium

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Me if I were a dog.

[typhlonectes]

[katiajewelbox]

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson

Source: Grow Your Garden Instagram page

[zegalba]

When it rains the white petals of Diphylleia Grayi also known as skeleton flowers, turn crystal clear.

[headspace-hotel]

data about where carbon emissions are coming from is so frustrating cause there's all kinds of huge, sprawling, just fucking vast breakdowns of What Causes The Most Carbon Emissions Out Of All Everything In The Entire World, but those are aggregations of numerous smaller but still vast aggregations of data, which are processed and polished from various aggregations of crunched numbers, which are patched and pieced together from various studies, estimates and calculations, which are sieved out of numbers crunched from various measurements, estimates and records, which have been collected, estimated or otherwise conceived through an unspeakably huge variety of methodologies with unspeakably huge variety in limitations, reliability and margins of error.

Even if some of the data was very fine-grained at the beginning, it was filtered through some very coarse number-crunching techniques for the sake of the coarse data, so the results are only as good as the wrongest thing you did in any part of this process, but the plans of action are getting thought up from the top down, which makes the whole thing a hot fucking mess.

For example. And I just made this example up. Say you want to know whether apples or potatoes have a worse impact on climate change. So you look at one of these huge ass infographic things. And it says that potatoes are bad, whereas apples are REALLY good, the BEST crop actually. So it's better to eat apples than potatoes, you think to yourself. Actually we should find a way to replace potatoes with apples! We should fund genetic engineering of apples so they have more starch and can replace potatoes. Great idea. Time to get some investors to put $5 billion towards it.

But actually. Where'd they get that conclusion about apples? Well there's this review right here of the carbon footprint of all different fruits, seems legit. Where'd that data come from? Well it's citing this study right here saying that tree-grown crops are better because they sequester carbon, and this study right here about the distance that different fruits get transported, and this study right here where different fertilization systems are compared in terms of their carbon footprint, and this study over here that sampled 300 apple, peach, and orange farmers comparing their irrigation practices and rates of tree mortality, and this study...wow, okay, seems really reliable...

...what's the first study citing? oh, okay, here's a study about mycorrhizal networks in orchards in Oregon, saying that there's a super high density of fungal mycelium in the 16 orchards that they sampled. And here's a study about leaf litter decay rates in Switzerland under different pesticide regimes, and...okay...relationship of tree spacing to below ground vs. aboveground biomass...a review of above and below-ground biomass in semi-intensively managed orchard plots...

...That one cites "Relationship between biomass and CO2 requirements...carbon immobilization in soil of various tree species...mycorrhizal fungi impact on carbon storage...

...wait a second, none of these are talking about apples, they're about boreal forests...and orange trees...and peanut farms! They're just speculating on roughly applying the non-apple data to apples. You have to go backwards...

Yes! "A review of belowground carbon storage in orchard cropping systems!" Seems like overall the studies find potentially high carbon storage in orchard environments! Walnuts...pears...oranges... intercropping walnuts and wheat... intercropping apples and wheat... wait a second, what about orchards with only apples?

Time for you to go back again...

"New method of mulching in apple orchards can lower irrigation and pesticide needs..." okay but if it's new, most farmers aren't doing it. "Orchards with high density interplanted with annual crops show way more mycorrhizal fungus activity..." "Mycorrhizal associations with trees in the genus Malus..."

...And pretty soon you've spent Five Fucking Hours investigating apples and you've got yourself in this tangled web of citations that demonstrate that some orchard crops (not necessarily apples) store a lot of long-lasting biomass in their trunks and roots really well—and some apple orchards (not necessarily typical ones) have high amounts of mycorrhizal fungi—and some techniques of mulching in orchards (not necessarily the ones apple farmers use) experience less erosion—and some apple trees (not necessarily productive agricultural apples) have really deep root systems—

—and some environments with trees, compared with some conventional agricultural fields, store more carbon and experience less erosion, but not apple orchards because that data wasn't collected in apple orchards.

And you figure out eventually that there is no direct evidence anywhere in the inputs that singles out apples as The Best Crop For Fighting Climate Change, or suggests that conventional apple farming has a much smaller carbon footprint than anything else.

The data just spit out "apples" after an unholy writhing mass of Processes that involved 1) observing some tree-grown crops and deciding it applies closely enough to all tree grown crops 2) observing some apple orchards and deciding its applicable enough to all apple orchards 3) observing some tree-including environments and deciding its close enough to all tree-including environments 4) observing some farming methods and deciding it applies closely enough to all farming methods

And any one of these steps individually would be fine and totally unavoidable, but when strung together repeatedly they distort the original data into A Puddle of Goo.

And it wouldn't be that bad even to string them together, if trees didn't vary that much, and farming didn't vary that much, and soil didn't vary that much, and mycorrhizal networks didn't vary that much, and regions that grow apples didn't vary that much, and pre-conversion-to-apple-orchard states of apple orchards didn't vary that much, and economic incentives controlling apple farming didn't vary that much, but all of these things DO vary, a Fuck Ton, and if the full range of variation were taken into account—nay, intentionally optimized—the distinction between apples and potatoes might turn out to be be MEANINGLESS GOO.

anyway big size piles of data about Farming, In General, make me so bitchy

[amnhnyc]

Imagine a pinecone as heavy as a bowling ball and the size of a chihuahua. Believe it or not, such pinecones exist—and they belong to the coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), a conifer that can be found in parts of North America including California and Mexico. Infamous among loggers and foresters, this tree is nicknamed "the widowmaker" because of the unlucky individuals who met their fate as a result of its falling pinecones. This species produces the largest pinecones on the planet, weighing up to 11 lbs (5 kg)!

Photo: damontighe, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[lemonscribs]

Matcha-microbiology 🧪

[mindblowingscience]

A rare species of tree cactus has gone extinct in Florida, in what is believed to be the first species lost to sea level rise in the United States, researchers said Tuesday. The Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) was restricted to a single small population in the Florida Keys, an archipelago off the southern tip of the state, first discovered in 1992 and monitored intermittently since then. But salt water intrusion caused by rising seas, soil erosion from storms and high tides, and herbivory by mammals placed significant pressure on the last population.

Continue Reading.

[reasonsforhope]

"A surprise discovery from the University of Birmingham shows that we may be significantly underestimating the potential of trees to regulate the variables of climate change.

That’s because they found microbes living inside trees’ bark absorb the greenhouse gas methane about as significantly as microbes living in the soil.

It’s long been thought that soil is the only effective terrestrial methane sink, as certain microorganisms use methane as a food source, but similar creatures live under a tree’s layer of bark, meaning that not only do our woody cousins withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their roots, but also remove methane as well, about as effectively or perhaps more so than soil.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas for the few short years it exists in the atmosphere before degrading.

Professor Vincent Gauci of U. Birmingham led the study, published in the journal Nature.

In the study, the researchers investigated upland tropical, temperate, and boreal forest trees. Specifically, they took measurements spanning tropical forests in the Amazon and Panama; temperate broadleaf trees in the UK; and boreal coniferous forests in Sweden.

The methane absorption was strongest in the tropical forests, probably because microbes thrive in the warm wet conditions found there. On average the newly discovered methane absorption adds around 10% to the climate benefit that temperate and tropical trees provide.

By studying methane exchange between the atmosphere and the tree bark at multiple heights, the researchers were able to show that while at soil level the trees were likely to emit a small amount of methane, from a couple of meters up the direction of exchange switches and methane from the atmosphere is consumed.

In addition, the team used laser scanning methods to quantify the overall global forest tree bark surface area, with preliminary calculations indicating that the total global contribution of trees is between 24.6-49.9 Tg (millions of tonnes) of methane. This fills a big gap in understanding the global sources and sinks of methane.

“Tree woody surfaces add a third dimension to the way life on Earth interacts with the atmosphere, and this third dimension is teeming with life, and with surprises,” said co-author Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford."

-via Good News Network, July 31, 2024

[hellsitegenetics]

Planning on becoming a biology teacher and whenever i see your posts it just gives me a motivation boost, it's so very interesting and i'm so very glad there's a blog for it 💕

String identified: ag cg a g tac a t t t g a tat t, t' ttg a ' ga t' a g t 💕

Closest match: Vitis vinifera cultivar Black Monukka isolate seedless chromosome 16 Common name: Common Grape Vine

(image source)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, so this is really cool! You have this phenomenon where some plants grow edible appendages to their seeds to entice ants to carry them underground where they can safely sprout. And then you have wasps which lay their eggs on the leaves, stems, and other parts of plants and trigger the growth of galls (swellings) which both feed and protect the wasp larvae until they reach maturity.

The boy who was watching the ants noticed they were taking wasp galls underground, too. Further exploration found that the wasp larvae were unharmed inside the galls; the only thing the ants had eaten were edible appendages similar to those on the seeds they collected. The wasp larvae stayed safe inside the ant nest, feeding on their galls, until it was time to emerge and head back out to the surface.

So it turns out that the edible portions of the galls have the same sorts of fatty acids as the edible parts of the seeds. And those fatty acids are also found in dead insects. Scientists think that the wasps evolved a way to make the galls they created mimic the edible portions of the seeds to get the ants to collect the galls. This isn't the only example of wasps making use of ants as caretakers for their young, but it's a really fascinating example thereof--especially if you consider ants evolved from wasps at least 100 million years ago.