August 5, 2024 • 43 mins
What's up Plant People?? It's been a minute since our last Q&A episode, and I have some good ones for you today! Thanks to @marahw1999, @honukaimi, and Shannon Perry (oz9podcast) for the outstanding questions!
Be sure to check out the Lubbock Arts Alliance on Instagram and their other socials to learn more about Delightful Fantasy Flowers and enter for a chance to win some cool swag!
Oh, and if you'd like to watch a cool time lapse of a dragon fruit blooming, you can find that on my Instagram!
As always, thanks so much for listening! Subscribe, rate, and review Planthropology on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show keep growing and reaching more people! As a bonus, if you review Planthropology on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and send me a screenshot of it, I'll send you an awesome sticker pack!
Planthropology is written, hosted, and produced by Vikram Baliga. Our theme song is "If You Want to Love Me, Babe, by the talented and award-winning composer, Nick Scout. Midroll tunes are by Rooey.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What is up?
Plant people it's time oncemore for the Plantthropology
Podcast, the show where we diveinto the lives and careers of
some very cool plant people tofigure out why they do what they
do and what keeps them comingback for more.
I'm Vikram Baliga, your hostand your humble guide in this
journey through the sciences.
And, as always, my friends, Iam so excited to be with you
today.
It's time for Q&A episode.
(00:21):
Yes, my friends, it's been aminute like a lot of minutes.
I don't know what's that.
What's that play rent wherethey talk about how many minutes
are in a year?
I don't remember.
It's a big number.
It's been more than a yearsince we've done a Q&A and I
thought that would be a good way, as summer vacations are
wrapping up for a lot of peopleand just to kick off a fall
(00:43):
semester and a fall time, Ithought it would be fun to do a
fall summer Q&A.
So, as always, I asked forquestions online through social
media.
I got questions through TikTokand threads and different places
that's mostly where I am todayis threads, instagram and TikTok
I still use the other outlets alittle bit, but mostly those
(01:04):
and I got some reallyinteresting ones.
So I picked four questions thatI thought it would be great to
go over, and some of these aremore my opinions about things
than yes, of course, we're goingto cover science and talk about
actual science, but there areinteresting concepts that I
thought would be fun to discuss.
This won't be a super longepisode, but I did want to get
(01:26):
to a few of your questions, aswe are in the heart of summer
and summer vacations wrapping upand all of that once again.
So let's get right into it.
Let's talk about a few of yourquestions.
So Okie dokie.
(02:03):
So this first one is not aspecific or one specific
question, I guess from alistener or from a social media
follower.
It's actually sort of anaggregate of a whole lot of
questions I have been asked overthe past few weeks.
So if you've been followingalong with my social media,
you'll know that I've had adragon fruit in the greenhouse
that was blooming, and dragonfruits are just such fascinating
(02:27):
plants that along the way I gotquite a few various questions
about it, from how does thisgrow, what are the growing
conditions, how do you pollinateit, etc.
And I thought that would be agreat place to start.
So instead of picking one ofthose specifically.
I kind of wanted to give aoverview of how dragon fruits
work and how cultivation ofdragon fruits work and all of
(02:51):
that.
So we'll jump into it.
We'll talk a little bit aboutwhat they are, how they grow,
what you can do with them if youhave some, and we'll go from
there.
So, first off, if you have notseen a dragon fruit before,
they're really strange, reallywild looking fruits and I think
they get their name because theykind of look like dragon eggs
or the fruits themselves do.
They have these interestingkind of scaly, peely skins.
(03:13):
Usually they're sort of like abright fuchsia red, or sometimes
they are yellow.
The flesh inside can either bewhite or red, sort of a I say
red, sort of like a deep,powerful, vehement purple, and
sometimes they can be somecombination or some area in
(03:33):
there between the two there aresmall black seeds, very similar
in structure and appearance andsort of the way we approach them
, as a kiwi seed.
Now, if you've eaten a kiwi youknow they've got little black
seeds in them, and dragon fruitshave those as well, except that
the seeds are more distributedthroughout the flesh of the
(03:54):
fruit, the flesh of the fruit aswe're speaking of.
It is kind of custardy intexture, right it's not very
firm.
In texture, right it's not veryfirm.
Usually it's chopped intolittle chunks and eaten that way
, or it's eaten with a spoon orsomething similar.
(04:15):
Now, a lot of people don't lovedragon fruit and I kind of get
it, especially some of the whitefleshed varieties.
Their flavor is really subdued.
They're sweet but they don'tnecessarily get a lot of the
tanginess again that you wouldexpect with something like a
kiwi.
And that's okay.
You know it is again a veryspecific taste, but some of the
red or purple fleshed onesactually have a lot of
(04:37):
interesting flavors.
Now, of course this issubjective, but out of the three
I personally think the onesthat are yellow on the outside
kind of taste the best.
They have an interesting sortof combination of flavors and I
think a lot of times they arethe most I don't know complex
when you eat them.
In a lot of ways.
(04:58):
Now there are three mainvarieties that are cultivated.
They're all in the Hyliceriusgenus and as such they are night
blooming cactus.
We'll talk about that more in asecond.
Probably the most common onethat you get is a red skinned
fruit sort of again, red ismaybe underselling it, it's
really like hot pink, but we cancall it red and has white flesh
(05:20):
, and this is hylicerius anddotus.
The red fleshed fruit whichalso has sort of a hot pink
outside is Hylocereuscostarricensis, or sometimes
you'll see that as Hylocereuspolyrysis, and then the
yellow-skinned and white-fleshedfruit is Hylocereus megalanthus
.
Now, all of these growsimilarly.
(05:41):
They have similar growth habits, similar cultivation
requirements and all of thatthey are native to different
parts of Central and SouthAmerica, but generally they can
be grown interchangeably.
Now, what does a dragon fruitlook like?
Have you ever seen, when you goto the garden center, lowe's,
(06:01):
home Depot, wherever, thosegrafted moon cactus?
So they're usually like abright red sort of bulb looking
thing, or sometimes they'reyellow or orange or different
colors and they're grafted ontop of a green sort of stalk of
a cactus that's a hylacerius,the one on the bottom, and they
(06:21):
grow quickly, they growaggressively, they are sort of
triangular in form, but this isa large, sprawling and climbing
plant.
Out in nature it would eithersort of sprawl on the ground,
but more commonly would climbdozens of feet.
In some cases of trees.
Now they're heavy, they cancause shading and so they can
(06:42):
actually damage your trees.
So in cultivation, heavy, theycan cause shading and so they
can actually damage your trees.
So in cultivation they'reusually grown on poles People
will use either like a four byfour pole or a six by six pole,
usually somewhere between eightand 10, 12 feet tall, and
they're grown up that pole andthen sort of pruned into a tree.
It's really interesting.
So you'll see lots of no,they're not vines, but lots of
(07:05):
stock coming up the pole andthen they sort of fan out at the
top to kind of look like thecanopy on a tree.
The flowers form usually on themargins or sometimes the ends of
these pads, of these cactuspads.
They're called cladophils.
This plant again is a cactus,doesn't have leaves, does have
thorns.
You want to be careful aboutthat.
(07:27):
But a lot of times incultivation the flowers along
the sort of main body of thesecladophils are removed and the
ones at the end of the stems areleft so that it kind of looks
good.
You ever seen the Simpsons?
You know Sideshow Bob.
Think about Sideshow Bob.
That's kind of what theseplants look like.
(07:47):
And imagine if Sideshow Bob hadbig, hot pink dragon egg shaped
fruits at the end of his hairand you've kind of of reasons
for this.
But what I was mentioningearlier is we had one in the
greenhouse that I have worked ona little bit this summer to get
(08:08):
it trained up and over thislittle trellis structure we have
, and we actually got threeblooms at the same time off of
it, which was super cool.
Now, these blooms, if you'veseen a night blooming cactus,
are probably not a huge surprise, but they are always just so
incredible to look at.
They are usually somewhereabout 20 centimeters in diameter
.
If you were to put your hand upto it it'd be, you know, as big
(08:30):
or sometimes even larger thanthe palm of your hand with the
fingers splayed out.
They are sort of bright whitewith yellow on the outside.
The buds are sort of long andscaly looking and those scales
peel back and they're the sepalsthat form the base of the
flower.
The flower has a long pistil,which is again the female
(08:54):
reproductive structure, andmultiple anthers producing
pollen, or multiple stamensproducing pollen.
Now, these have a heavy pollenload and I would describe the
smell and they're very fragrant,very fragrant.
It's kind of hard to describe.
I would think if you've eversmelled a lily and if you've
ever smelled a jasmine.
(09:15):
The smell is kind of somewherein between.
It's very floral, but it's kindof sweet in nature as well.
If the pollen, if you'reallergic to, like lilies and
other plants like that, it cancause a little bit of allergy
problems and they produce a lotof pollen.
Now some varieties of dragonfruit are self-fertile and they
(09:37):
can self-pollinate.
You can usually tell this isthe case if the pistil is about
the same length as all of thestamens.
So if the stigma, which is theplace on the pistil, is about
the same length as all of thestamens, so if the stigma, which
is the place on the pistilwhere pollen is deposited, is
about the same distance from thebase of the flower as all the
pollen, that kind of makes sense, right?
If everything is there in thesame spot, that flower can
self-pollinate.
(09:57):
Now these are co-sexual flowers, so they have both male and
female reproductive structures,a lot of varieties and the
variety that we have in thegreenhouse I believe we are.
It's never fruited, so I'm not100% sure, but I believe we have
the hylacerias and doddus, thered outside, white inside.
So on ours the pistil is longerthan the stamens, so that means
(10:22):
that the plant is not sofertile or the flowers are not
so fertile Now in some cases,and our success rate is pretty
low with this if you pollinateone of these varieties with a
different flower on the sameplant, sometimes, sometimes
you'll get pollination, and Iposted a video on my social
media of me doing exactly that.
I went up there in the middle ofthe night and it's a
(10:43):
night-blooming cactus and Ipollinated it myself.
None of them took.
None of the three took.
Now I would really need asecond plant, which is something
I'm going to kind of work on,so that maybe we can get fruit
one day so I could crosspollinate.
The challenging thing sometimesis I can't just necessarily
take a pad from one of my dragonfruits and make a second one,
(11:04):
because that's a clone, right,the genetics are the same.
So even cross pollinating, thatusually does not have a really
high success rate.
So I'm probably going to try toget some seeds.
Either I'll buy a fruit orsomething.
I'll germinate some, I'll growsome off and then maybe next
summer summer after I may beable to get some cross
pollination.
I digress they arenight-blooming cactus, which
(11:25):
means they are generallypollinated by things like moths
and bats other animals that areactive at night and it's really
cool to watch as the flower isdeveloping you'll start to see
these floral nectaries sort ofgo into overdrive.
So on the outside of the flowerbud you get little drops of
nectar that form, and thatreally makes some sense
(11:47):
evolutionarily because ifthey're going to put all of
their effort, all of theirenergy into blooming each flower
once at night, they want asmany pollinators present at that
time as possible.
So they produce this nectar totry to get moths and bats and
again other animals in the area.
They want them around when theyfinally bloom and then when
they do bloom again they'refragrant, they are large and
(12:09):
white to reflect moonlight andthey have large nectaries so
that any animals coming to feedon them have a really good
chance of pollinating them.
Now, if you read a lot ofguides, they actually recommend
and it's really reallyinteresting that you go right as
the flower opens and collectpollen and then keep it and then
wait till later in the night orearly in the morning to
(12:32):
actually deposit that pollen onthe stigma, which is interesting
.
That may be another safeguardin some of these varieties
against self pollination so that, if you know, there's a little
bit of lag time between pollenproduction and pollen drop and
the time that the femalereproductive system is really
active, so that it gives timefor animals insects to go
(12:57):
collect a lot of pollen and moveon to another flower a little
bit later.
Now I've also read stuff thatsays that you can just do it
right away and it's fine as longas you're cross-poll.
So again, I unfortunatelydidn't have any success
pollinating it, but it was fun.
I posted some pictures in thetime lapse that I will link in
the show notes of this episode.
So if you'd like to go watch it, you certainly can.
(13:18):
I would encourage you to and Iwould love it if you did.
But yeah, there's such coolplants, there's such cool plants
, they're such cool plants.
A couple of caveats.
They're big plants, they'recool and they're very big.
So, like I said, they can growdozens of feet up a tree.
Ours is on an eight to ninefoot trellis structure and it
(13:42):
easily grows up that they'll puton a couple of inches of growth
a day in some cases.
So if you're going to get adragon fruit some things you
want to keep in mind you need awell-drained, relatively sandy
soil.
A cactus mix works well,something with a lot of perlite
or gravel works really well.
Heavy clay content in your soilor in your potting media is not
necessarily recommended, butyou can get away with it if you
can add gypsum and some otherthings to it.
(14:04):
You want to water thoroughlywhen you do water, but you don't
want to keep it soggy all thetime again.
It likes a well-drained soil.
Now, this is a tropical orsemi-tropical plant, so you do
need to water it and it likessome humidity, but overall it is
also still a cactus right andyou need room for it to sprawl.
Now this plant does have afairly shallow root, again like
(14:26):
a lot of cacti, and not anextensive root system.
The nice thing about that isyou can keep it in a large pot.
As a tropical plant, it wouldneed to come in in the winter.
It does not tolerate anythingeven close to a frost.
Ok, so anything below about 10Celsius can kill the plant.
It can definitely slow it downand reduce flowering and fruit
(14:48):
production all that.
So it's a cool plant.
It is easy to propagate, eitherthrough seed or through cutting
up the pads.
There's a lot of options withit and I just I think it's
something so cool and so if youlive somewhere where it's really
hot in the summer, it likes hotweather.
If you've got a bright porch,you could put it on a large pot,
maybe something to trellis iton.
(15:09):
I think it's a great option.
No-transcript, but yeah, dragonfruits are great.
Go watch the video, let me knowwhat you think, and I hope this
(15:32):
gave you a little bit ofinformation about them.
Okay, so the second question fortoday is a really interesting
one.
That came from Threads and I'll, by the way, give credit to all
the question askers down in theshow notes.
But this person asked what isthe environmental impact of
lichens?
And I thought about this for awhile and I was like, is there
(15:57):
one?
I mean, of course there is.
It's a living thing on thisplanet.
We all have an impact on theenvironment.
Everything that's alive on thisimpact on this planet impacts
the environment.
So I thought, sure, let's lookinto it.
Lichens are fascinating,fascinating, and it turns out I
really didn't know much aboutthem.
Now I want to preface this insaying lichens are not really
(16:18):
plants.
They're not really not plants.
They live in sort of their ownlittle weird gray area.
Ok, lichens are very strange.
They're also not really asingle organism.
Every individual lichen is madeup of two different organisms,
which is such a just a weirdthing to think about.
So they are a symbiotic colonybetween a species of fungi and a
(16:42):
species of algae, between aspecies of fungi and a species
of algae.
Now, there are thousands ofdifferent what we would call
species of lichen or lichens allover the world, thousands in
North America, thousands ofdifferent climates.
They're on, I believe, everycontinent except Antarctica, and
that I'm even not sure about.
Now, again, I don't know a tonabout lichens.
(17:04):
So if you're a lichen expert,please call me, shoot me an
email.
I would love to talk to you onthe show and take corrections
for all the stuff that I'm sureI'm about to mess up.
I researched, I read severalarticles about lichens and I am
beginning to think that I'm moreconfused now than when I
started.
But I'm going to take a run atthis because they're so
(17:24):
fascinating.
So again, what we call lichenor species of lichen is a
symbiotic relationship between afungus and an algae, and there
are thousands of species of both, and some of them live in dry
climates.
Some of them live in wetclimates dry climates.
(17:46):
Some of them live in wetclimates.
Some of them live in hot andcold or really wet or really hot
or really cold, rainforests anddeserts, and all over the place
.
In fact, we read a statisticthat lichens are actually a
dominant life form in like 7% ofour ecosystems.
They're a keystone species allover the world.
Now, if you've never seen alichen, I bet you have.
I bet you just never thoughtabout it.
(18:07):
So if you're in the woodshiking and there's this rock
that looks like it's covered inmoss, it may be moss, but odds
are good that it could be alichen.
Lichens are a variety of colors.
You'll see them in yellows andoranges, reds and greens and
whites and all kinds of colors,but a lot of times will be a
little white fringe around theoutside with some kind of color
(18:27):
in the middle.
So a lot of times what weconsider oh, that's a mossy rock
is actually a rock with lichenon it.
Now, a lichen is essentially afungus that is acting as sort of
a habitat or a superstructurethat a different kind of algae
lives on.
So the lichen provides a placefor the algae to grow, the algae
(18:48):
photosynthesizes and then feedsthe fungus and you get this
symbiotic, really fascinatingrelationship.
Now a lot of different animalseat lichen, from reindeer to
mice and birds and otherherbivores.
It's a huge food source for alot of different things.
(19:09):
It also helps in soil creation,which I just thought was so
fascinating.
So all the soil out there andjust for a quick soils lesson.
Soil is made of sand, silt andclay.
The difference between sand,silt and clay is the size of the
particle Sand is biggest, siltis in the middle and clay is the
smallest.
Now, these come from differenttypes of parent materials, but
(19:32):
we call it a soil if it hasthose three things basically in
them, and the biggestdifferences are sizes.
So all of our soil comes fromrocks, from mountains, through
erosion whether that's winderosion, sun freezing, cracking
water, all kinds of things theybreak rocks down into smaller
particles that become the soilthat's deposited elsewhere.
(19:55):
Lichen also play a big role inthis.
So as the lichen grows on rocks, the fungi mines between
particles in the rocks andbreaks off little bits and over
time this creates soildeposition.
So without lichens we wouldactually have a lot less soil.
They have played a major role increating soil on this planet,
(20:19):
also because they areessentially made of algae.
Algae photosynthesizes.
Photosynthesis makes oxygen.
So, in addition to all thetrees and grasses and plants and
waterborne algae and everythingelse, lichens are producing
oxygen on this planet.
They are photosyntheticorganisms and it's really cool,
(20:39):
really cool.
But one of the major thingsthat we as humans kind of look
at lichen for are diagnostictools.
So they get all their food fromthe air, right, they pull their
nutrients essentially directlyfrom the air.
They don't have roots, they'renot plants, they're plant
adjacent, but they're not plants.
Okay, algae is a photosyntheticorganism and so it turns
(21:03):
sunlight and carbon dioxide andwater and other things into
sugars.
Those sugars are used to runall the processes in that
organism.
So as they're growing they areabsorbing air.
It turns out that lichen adaptrelatively slowly to their
(21:23):
environment.
Now, that's not true of all ofthem, but a lot of them take
time to adapt and maybe it'sbecause of the symbiotic
relationship.
There's a lot of moving partsthere, so to speak.
They don't move really.
That's maybe beyond the scopeof this.
They're complicated and becauseof that complexity I think a
lot of times they evolverelatively slowly and they're
(21:43):
adapted to a specificenvironment, right, because it's
a specific species of fungithat's endemic to an area and a
specific species of algae that'salso endemic to that area.
So they are very dependent onthe environment.
Scientists kind of look at themlike a canary in a coal mine.
Right, when the lichen startsuffering or we get a big
(22:07):
population explosion in aspecific kind of lichen, it
tells us a lot about the airthey're essentially consuming.
Is there more nitrogen in theair?
Are they able to produce moreof themselves?
Is there more carbon in the air?
Can they photosynthesize at ahigher rate?
Are oxygen rates lower?
So we can use lichens as adiagnostic tool for what the air
(22:31):
is doing, for what theclimate's doing.
They're going to be sensitiveto water.
They're going to be sensitiveto heat, wind speeds, nitrogen
or let's call it air content,all the things that go into
making something like that grow.
Little tweaks in that can causebig differences.
So by actually looking atdifferent species of lichens we
(22:57):
can tell oh, this one reallylikes nitrogen and the
population is exploding.
We probably have more nitrogeneither in our rainfall or in our
air.
Oh, but this one doesn't likenitrogen.
So same answer, or vice versa.
We can tell a lot about theenvironment by what the lichen
is doing.
So to answer the question,lichen has enormous, enormous
(23:23):
environmental impacts, both onthe way the environment
functions as part of the trophicsystem, as part of the whole
thing that things eat and theenergy transfer from the sun to
everything else, but also, again, as scientists who are trying
to monitor the environment andfigure out what's going on.
They are such an importantdiagnostic tool, such an
(23:43):
important diagnostic tool.
I am going to have to like findbooks on lichen now.
I don't need another degree.
In fact, I've been told by mywife that I should not get
another degree, but I would loveto study them more.
So, again, if you are a what alichenologist, a someone who
studies lichen I actually don'teven know what that would be Hit
(24:04):
me up, I would love to talk toyou, I would love to interview
you on the show.
If you know someone who is oneof those as well, send them my
way.
But you can be sure I'm goingto be reading about these weird
little creatures a lot movingforward.
I'm going to take a quick break,do some mid-roll stuff.
I've got some stuff to tell youand then we'll be back, and
I've got two more questions toanswer.
Well, hey there, welcome to themid-roll.
(24:26):
I hope you're enjoying thesequestions and their answers.
I always have fun doing these.
They're really interestingepisodes for me.
I get to do some research, Iget to learn some new things and
I get to share them with you.
So if you have questions you'dlike for me to answer on the
show, I plan on doing a few moreof these this year, hopefully,
(24:47):
and I would love to answer yourquestion.
But until then, tell yourhouseplants I said hello, that I
miss them, that I hope they'rewell.
I hope you're well too.
Thanks for listening toPlantthropology and being a part
of what happens here throughinconsistent scheduling and long
droughts between episodes andjust me rambling on this podcast
.
It means a lot that you'restill here and I do this because
I enjoy getting to talk to you.
(25:07):
I enjoy getting to talk toreally cool plant people and
just explore this world andlearn more about it.
I enjoy learning more.
If you would like to connectwith Plantthropology, look me up
on social media.
We are either like to connectwith Plantthropology.
Look me up on social media.
We are either Plantthropologyor PlantthropologyPod all over
the place.
You can get me personally atThePlantProf and you can send me
(25:29):
an email at PlantthropologyPodat gmailcom If you've got
suggestions for guests.
If you would like to be a guest, if you want to just give me
some feedback, I would love somuch to hear from you.
If you want to just give mesome feedback, I would love so
much to hear from you.
Thanks to the Texas TechDepartment of Plain Soil Science
for letting me do the show andsupporting the show.
Thanks to the Davis College ofAgricultural Science and Natural
Resources for the same, andthanks mostly to you, the
(25:52):
listener, for being a part of it.
If you want to supportplanthropology in other ways,
the best way to do that is totell someone about the show.
Tell a friend.
Word of mouth is still the bestway to get the word out about
the show.
If you want to leave me areview on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or anywhere else, itwould mean the world to me if
(26:15):
you did that.
If you do it and send me to myemail or my social media a
screenshot of the review, I'llsend you some stickers and stuff
, because I'm getting newstickers and I have a whole
bunch I need to get rid of thatare already here.
And if you want to financiallysupport the show, you can go to
planthropologypodcastcom andsnag some merch, or you can go
to buymeacoffeecom slashplanthropology and for the price
of a cup of coffee you can buyme a cup of coffee and some show
(26:38):
hosting and production costsand all of that.
A couple of other things Iwanted to talk about.
I wrote a book last year it'sbeen out over a year which is
bonkers to me.
It's called Plants to theRescue.
It's about climate change andhow plants and science can help
us deal with that issue, and ifyou haven't picked one up yet,
if you haven't seen it, I wouldencourage you to do that.
Go, check out a local bookshop,go to the library, and I would
(27:07):
just.
It would mean the world to meand if you have read it, drop me
a review for that as well.
Also, it has been my pleasurethis summer to get to partner
with the Lubbock Arts Allianceto promote one of their new
citywide art exhibits calledDelightful Fantasy Flowers by
artist Glory Hartsfield.
Now these are spread out allover the city.
There are four installationsalong our highways.
It's a collaboration withLubbock Arts Alliance, the
(27:27):
Tornado Industrial Arts, theartist herself and the Texas
Department of Transportation.
Now, when I say that these arebig metal flower sculptures, I'm
not underselling it.
They are 13 feet tall.
They're brightly colorful.
They represent a lot ofcomposite flowers you might find
in your landscape.
We're actually doing a videoseries right now talking about
plants that resemble them, thatyou could use in your own yard.
(27:51):
So go check out the LubbockArts Alliance.
If you're in Lubbock, texas, godrive around town and look at
the delightful fantasy flowersinstallations.
They're so cool.
You can see them from your carjust driving by.
You can see them from a longway off.
I'll post an image with theshow notes or a link to the
image in the show notes whereyou can see the locations of all
of them.
They're such cool exhibits.
(28:11):
I was thrilled when I was askedto be a part of it because I
love the Limit Guards Alliance,I love supporting community art
and I love supporting educationabout plants.
Okay, now time to answer somemore questions.
Let's do it.
So the third and fourthquestion I got are sort of
related.
They go hand in hand in someways and I'm going to take them
(28:33):
one at a time, but I hope youcan see how they sort of work
together.
Someone asked is someonestudying how backyard gardeners
have to shift their growingseasons or crops due to changing
climates, due to climate change, and the answer is a big yes, a
huge, massive, incredibly largeyes.
There is so much work goinginto what's going to happen with
(28:55):
our crops.
What plants can we grow basedon a change in climate and based
on changing seasons andseasonal variations and patterns
and longer growing seasons,which sounds like maybe that
would be a good thing?
I don't know, it's a mixed bag,right?
Maybe the things that wouldbloom at a certain time of year
(29:17):
and be done before it's cold maynot do that, or they may bloom
too early and get hit by a latefreeze.
There's so much that goes intoit.
If you've been sort offollowing these kinds of things
the past few months, the pastyear or so, you may know that
the USDA, the US Department ofAgriculture, unveiled its new
plant hardiness zone map and inthat pretty much all the
(29:38):
hardiness zones in the USshifted higher.
We're in higher zones than weused to be.
Now this is an interestingmetric and it doesn't
necessarily mean what a lot ofpeople think it means, so I
wanted to talk about that forjust a second.
This is a measure of a 30 yearaverage of the average annual
(29:59):
lowest temperature on that year,the annual lowest temperature
on that year.
They take 30 years of data andaggregate them, and there's
usually a two or three year lagbetween the current year and
when all the data is processed.
So we're looking at data fromat this point, 2020, 2021, 22
and there.
So it is not an averagetemperature.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how hot average
(30:19):
temperature.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how hot it gets.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how long it stays cold
during the winter.
All it tells you is in thisgiven location, what is the
coldest it got.
Okay, so I'm in zone 7A, now 7B.
We actually just got bumped up,which means that our average
annual coldest temperature isbetween zero and 10 degrees
(30:40):
Fahrenheit, which is pretty cold.
It's pretty cold here.
That does not tell you that itwill get to 114 degrees in the
summer and it does not tell youthat it will be 40, 50 degrees
most of the winter, with somefreezing temperatures at night,
really pretty mild.
So this is a useful tool, but itshould not be the only thing we
look at when we think about oh,everything is warmer,
(31:03):
everything is warmer.
These have been a couple, threeof our hottest summers on
record.
It seems like we break a newrecord just about every day.
That's not great, but the USDAhardiness zone map is not the
be-all end-all as far as thatgoes.
What that does tell us.
If we look at the big picture,though, is that we're warming up
right, and if you look atweather data climate data we can
(31:28):
see that our growing times, ourgrowing seasons, have
absolutely shifted, and thatmeans a couple of things.
It means that, maybe, thingsthat we have grown, you know,
historically in the southern US,we are going to either be able
(31:48):
to, or maybe have to, push alittle bit farther north, so we
have to think about okay, how dowe address this?
When can we plant?
How do we go about it?
It's going to get harder andharder to grow certain crops in
hotter climates, and crops thatmaybe need more chilling in the
winter, like a lot of our treefruits, a lot of our tree crops.
It may get harder to grow incooler climates or just in
(32:10):
general.
So, yes, there is a lot ofresearch that goes into this.
Pa published some data through2023, looking at the average
length of growing season in thecontiguous 48 states the lower
48.
Okay, and the long term averageand we see some large
(32:31):
deviations from our long termaverage.
And if you look at, you know100 years of data, 130 years of
data.
Here there are some dips.
In the early 1900s there was adip in our growing season about
seven days shorter than thelong-term average.
Between 1930 and about 1990,we've been hovering right around
(32:52):
zero or right around thelong-term average number of
growing days.
Now, this is not a hard number,right, because this is an
average of lots of differentclimates or lots of different
regions.
But starting in about 1990, wesee this huge spike in the
number of growing days in aseason and we're up nearly two
weeks.
Our growing season on averageacross the continental US is up
(33:17):
nearly two weeks.
Now that may sound like a goodthing and again, in some cases I
guess it could be right.
We have longer to grow crops,but that also changes when we
plant.
It also changes how we plant.
What also that doesn't captureis the amount of carbon in the
air, the amount of carbondioxide out there.
Yes, plants like that to apoint, but it also creates more
(33:39):
heat, right, we have hottersummer days.
That makes it harder to growcertain things.
So as a backyard gardener.
That's actually something wereally have to be paying
attention to and there's a lotof science that goes into it.
Now most of the research isbeing done in more commercial
operations because that's easierto study and easier to quantify
(33:59):
.
But if you think of the impactsthat we're going to see in the
agricultural setting in openfields, that's probably going to
be amplified in cityenvironments.
We get urban heat islandeffects, we get heat domes, we
get increased carbon dioxideoutput in maybe carbon dioxide
in the air from exhausts, we getmore pollution, we get water
(34:21):
problems.
So as we see some of theseclimate growing season issues in
our ag settings, we'reabsolutely going to see them in
our home gardens.
I think some things that a lotof home gardeners probably need
to do is think about how do weadd shade.
How do we in certain placesright, this is not true
(34:43):
everywhere, but if you live in aplace where the sun is super
intense, where your humidity islow, maybe you get a lot of
solar intensity.
Where it's really hot, we getlong days.
Probably thinking about how dowe provide some afternoon shade
to our garden plants is not abad idea.
When we say full sun, we'retalking six, eight, 10 hours of
direct sunlight in normalconditions, and then much more
(35:06):
than that, we start to run intoproblems.
So we need to think about that.
We need to think about makingsure we can provide enough water
and nutrients and everythingelse to our plants, and we need
to make sure that we are growingthings that are well acclimated
to our area, to where we'retrying to grow.
So that might mean having toshift our practices a little bit
(35:26):
, having to think differentlyabout what we grow and when we
grow it and how we grow it.
There's a lot that goes intothis y'all.
So, yeah, there is a lot ofresearch going into how this is
going to affect backyardgardeners, but I think we need
to be looking at it on a globalscale as well, on an
agricultural and just societalfood supply scale as well,
(35:47):
because that's kind of scaryscary to me.
But this was not.
This is and I hope youunderstand like my intent is
never to be like doom and gloom,because there are very smart
people out there working on it.
Right, and, yes, maybe it's anuphill battle, but if you go
back and listen to Dr CatherineHayhoe's episode from from
(36:08):
earlier in the year, she issomeone who is in this every day
.
Right, she's a climatescientist who is in this every
day and she's hopeful.
She presents these issues notas a oh, we're doomed.
She's not a doomerist at all.
She's hopeful about what we cando and if we're able to work
(36:29):
together, if we're able to be Idon't know cooperative and
open-minded and all of that, wecan still steer the ship back in
the right direction.
But that's something that'sgoing to take all of us to do
for sure.
So my last question actuallycame from my friend, shannon
Perry, who is the writer,producer, brain behind the Oz
nine podcast, which, if you golisten to episode 100 of the Oz
(36:52):
nine podcast, I actually got tobe a voice actor and it was so
much fun and I played myself inthat.
I was, I was me.
So I don't know if that meansthat the Oz nine exists in our
universe or if I exist in theiruniverse.
I don't know which one of thoseis more concerning to me.
Don't just go listen to episode100.
(37:13):
It won't make any sense.
You should go and catch up.
I know full well that y'all areout here listening to like 30
hour long audio books.
These are 20 minute episodes.
20 minute episodes, you cancatch up.
It won't take you that long,Okay, uh, if you've listened to
the Lord of the Rings on audiobooks, if you listen to Brandon
Sanderson, you can definitely gocatch up on Oz nine, and I
(37:33):
think you definitely should, andthen tell me what you think
about episode 100.
It was so much fun.
Anyway, shannon asks what is thesingle best plant related thing
I can do to help theenvironment, and that is such a
good question and I wish I hadsome really scientific, really
well thought out, really wellresearched answer to this.
(37:56):
And I kind of don't, becausethere's never going to be just
one thing, right, there's nevergoing to be just one thing, one
action, one silver bullet, so tospeak, one bandaid that's going
to fix this big problem that ittook 8 billion of us and 120,
(38:17):
150 years to create.
So when I think about what isthe best thing that someone can
do to help the environment, itis to just start, to just start.
And in plant-related things,just grow something.
Just start growing something.
Start educating a friend aboutwhat you've learned about plants
(38:39):
, just start Audrey Hepburn, whois an actor but also a
humanitarian, and what a lot ofpeople don't know she was an
avid gardener an avid gardenerand she talked a lot about how
she used her garden to escapeeverything else in her life.
But Audrey Hepburn once said toplant a garden is to believe in
(39:00):
tomorrow.
To plant a garden is to believein tomorrow, and I think in our
fight against climate change,in our fight to save us and save
(39:24):
our environment, hope is ourbest and strongest and, in some
ways, most radical weapon.
So plant a garden, whether thatis you planting a peach tree or
tomato plants or whatever inyour backyard, or growing some
herbs in your kitchen in littlepots, or doing some stuff on
your patio.
(39:44):
Maybe you've got an old bathtubthat you put plants in.
Whatever it is, and however itis that you do, it, just start,
just start.
We a lot of times let our fearand our anxiety about the future
immobilize and it makes usstress and worry and have
anxiety.
But hoping is a radical act.
(40:04):
It is a radical act and it is apowerful act.
There I cannot overstate in myown mind and in my own life how
powerful hope is and how much itcan do.
So plant a garden, grow a plant,water something.
Be better about making sureyou're planting well adapted
(40:25):
species.
Don't spread invasives.
Cut down your Bradford peartree and plant something better.
Use a local farmers market,whatever it is.
That is the place that you canstart.
Do that, do that and planting agarden doesn't have to be
literally planting a garden.
It can be sowing the seeds ofall of these different things.
(40:46):
Taking your kid to the libraryto find information about the
environment, teaching them tovalue the plants around them a
little bit more, fight plantblindness, all of that.
There is so much.
We can do so many little thingsthat seem insignificant, but it
turns out.
All of that.
There is so much.
We can do so many little thingsthat seem insignificant, but it
turns out that all of ustogether are not insignificant,
right, and if we all do onelittle thing, one little thing,
(41:09):
if we all just start, we can doso much, we can accomplish so
much and we can save ourselves,we can save this environment and
and I think that that isincredible and I think that is
powerful.
So that is my non-scientific,philosophical answer to what is
the best plant thing we can doto help the environment.
(41:30):
Um, again, if you want to learnmore about environment like
dealing with the environment,fighting climate change.
Go listen to Dr Hayhoe's episodeI believe that was 102.
And there's so many good thingsout there, so many things you
can listen to, so much you canlearn, and I hope that we never
stop learning.
So thanks for listening, thanksfor being a part of this,
(41:52):
thanks for sending yourquestions.
I really these are, I think, asfar as like solo episodes that
I do, these are by far myfavorite this summer.
I'll probably have one moresolo episode coming out right
around the start of the semesterin a couple of weeks, and then
I have some great guests linedup for the fall.
So lots more plant anthropologycoming.
Send me your questions, send meyour thoughts, send me your
(42:13):
comments.
Follow along on social media.
Thanks again to you forlistening.
It means the world to me.
It really, really genuinelydoes, and it gives me hope,
which is something that I carrywith me as I go through my day.
So you know I love you, youknow I think you're the best.
Be kind to one another.
If you have not been kind toone another so far, give that a
(42:34):
shot.
It's pretty cool, good way tobe.
Keep being really cool.
Plant people and I will talk toyou next time.
(42:55):
Thank you.
What is up?
Plant people it's time oncemore for the Plantthropology
Podcast, the show where we diveinto the lives and careers of
some very cool plant people tofigure out why they do what they
do and what keeps them comingback for more.
I'm Vikram Baliga, your hostand your humble guide in this
journey through the sciences.
And, as always, my friends, Iam so excited to be with you
today.
It's time for Q&A episode.
(00:21):
Yes, my friends, it's been aminute like a lot of minutes.
I don't know what's that.
What's that play rent wherethey talk about how many minutes
are in a year?
I don't remember.
It's a big number.
It's been more than a yearsince we've done a Q&A and I
thought that would be a good way, as summer vacations are
wrapping up for a lot of peopleand just to kick off a fall
(00:43):
semester and a fall time, Ithought it would be fun to do a
fall summer Q&A.
So, as always, I asked forquestions online through social
media.
I got questions through TikTokand threads and different places
that's mostly where I am todayis threads, instagram and TikTok
I still use the other outlets alittle bit, but mostly those
(01:04):
and I got some reallyinteresting ones.
So I picked four questions thatI thought it would be great to
go over, and some of these aremore my opinions about things
than yes, of course, we're goingto cover science and talk about
actual science, but there areinteresting concepts that I
thought would be fun to discuss.
This won't be a super longepisode, but I did want to get
(01:26):
to a few of your questions, aswe are in the heart of summer
and summer vacations wrapping upand all of that once again.
So let's get right into it.
Let's talk about a few of yourquestions.
So Okie dokie.
(02:03):
So this first one is not aspecific or one specific
question, I guess from alistener or from a social media
follower.
It's actually sort of anaggregate of a whole lot of
questions I have been asked overthe past few weeks.
So if you've been followingalong with my social media,
you'll know that I've had adragon fruit in the greenhouse
that was blooming, and dragonfruits are just such fascinating
(02:27):
plants that along the way I gotquite a few various questions
about it, from how does thisgrow, what are the growing
conditions, how do you pollinateit, etc.
And I thought that would be agreat place to start.
So instead of picking one ofthose specifically.
I kind of wanted to give aoverview of how dragon fruits
work and how cultivation ofdragon fruits work and all of
(02:51):
that.
So we'll jump into it.
We'll talk a little bit aboutwhat they are, how they grow,
what you can do with them if youhave some, and we'll go from
there.
So, first off, if you have notseen a dragon fruit before,
they're really strange, reallywild looking fruits and I think
they get their name because theykind of look like dragon eggs
or the fruits themselves do.
They have these interestingkind of scaly, peely skins.
(03:13):
Usually they're sort of like abright fuchsia red, or sometimes
they are yellow.
The flesh inside can either bewhite or red, sort of a I say
red, sort of like a deep,powerful, vehement purple, and
sometimes they can be somecombination or some area in
(03:33):
there between the two there aresmall black seeds, very similar
in structure and appearance andsort of the way we approach them
, as a kiwi seed.
Now, if you've eaten a kiwi youknow they've got little black
seeds in them, and dragon fruitshave those as well, except that
the seeds are more distributedthroughout the flesh of the
(03:54):
fruit, the flesh of the fruit aswe're speaking of.
It is kind of custardy intexture, right it's not very
firm.
In texture, right it's not veryfirm.
Usually it's chopped intolittle chunks and eaten that way
, or it's eaten with a spoon orsomething similar.
(04:15):
Now, a lot of people don't lovedragon fruit and I kind of get
it, especially some of the whitefleshed varieties.
Their flavor is really subdued.
They're sweet but they don'tnecessarily get a lot of the
tanginess again that you wouldexpect with something like a
kiwi.
And that's okay.
You know it is again a veryspecific taste, but some of the
red or purple fleshed onesactually have a lot of
(04:37):
interesting flavors.
Now, of course this issubjective, but out of the three
I personally think the onesthat are yellow on the outside
kind of taste the best.
They have an interesting sortof combination of flavors and I
think a lot of times they arethe most I don't know complex
when you eat them.
In a lot of ways.
(04:58):
Now there are three mainvarieties that are cultivated.
They're all in the Hyliceriusgenus and as such they are night
blooming cactus.
We'll talk about that more in asecond.
Probably the most common onethat you get is a red skinned
fruit sort of again, red ismaybe underselling it, it's
really like hot pink, but we cancall it red and has white flesh
(05:20):
, and this is hylicerius anddotus.
The red fleshed fruit whichalso has sort of a hot pink
outside is Hylocereuscostarricensis, or sometimes
you'll see that as Hylocereuspolyrysis, and then the
yellow-skinned and white-fleshedfruit is Hylocereus megalanthus
.
Now, all of these growsimilarly.
(05:41):
They have similar growth habits, similar cultivation
requirements and all of thatthey are native to different
parts of Central and SouthAmerica, but generally they can
be grown interchangeably.
Now, what does a dragon fruitlook like?
Have you ever seen, when you goto the garden center, lowe's,
(06:01):
home Depot, wherever, thosegrafted moon cactus?
So they're usually like abright red sort of bulb looking
thing, or sometimes they'reyellow or orange or different
colors and they're grafted ontop of a green sort of stalk of
a cactus that's a hylacerius,the one on the bottom, and they
(06:21):
grow quickly, they growaggressively, they are sort of
triangular in form, but this isa large, sprawling and climbing
plant.
Out in nature it would eithersort of sprawl on the ground,
but more commonly would climbdozens of feet.
In some cases of trees.
Now they're heavy, they cancause shading and so they can
(06:42):
actually damage your trees.
So in cultivation, heavy, theycan cause shading and so they
can actually damage your trees.
So in cultivation they'reusually grown on poles People
will use either like a four byfour pole or a six by six pole,
usually somewhere between eightand 10, 12 feet tall, and
they're grown up that pole andthen sort of pruned into a tree.
It's really interesting.
So you'll see lots of no,they're not vines, but lots of
(07:05):
stock coming up the pole andthen they sort of fan out at the
top to kind of look like thecanopy on a tree.
The flowers form usually on themargins or sometimes the ends of
these pads, of these cactuspads.
They're called cladophils.
This plant again is a cactus,doesn't have leaves, does have
thorns.
You want to be careful aboutthat.
(07:27):
But a lot of times incultivation the flowers along
the sort of main body of thesecladophils are removed and the
ones at the end of the stems areleft so that it kind of looks
good.
You ever seen the Simpsons?
You know Sideshow Bob.
Think about Sideshow Bob.
That's kind of what theseplants look like.
(07:47):
And imagine if Sideshow Bob hadbig, hot pink dragon egg shaped
fruits at the end of his hairand you've kind of of reasons
for this.
But what I was mentioningearlier is we had one in the
greenhouse that I have worked ona little bit this summer to get
(08:08):
it trained up and over thislittle trellis structure we have
, and we actually got threeblooms at the same time off of
it, which was super cool.
Now, these blooms, if you'veseen a night blooming cactus,
are probably not a huge surprise, but they are always just so
incredible to look at.
They are usually somewhereabout 20 centimeters in diameter
.
If you were to put your hand upto it it'd be, you know, as big
(08:30):
or sometimes even larger thanthe palm of your hand with the
fingers splayed out.
They are sort of bright whitewith yellow on the outside.
The buds are sort of long andscaly looking and those scales
peel back and they're the sepalsthat form the base of the
flower.
The flower has a long pistil,which is again the female
(08:54):
reproductive structure, andmultiple anthers producing
pollen, or multiple stamensproducing pollen.
Now, these have a heavy pollenload and I would describe the
smell and they're very fragrant,very fragrant.
It's kind of hard to describe.
I would think if you've eversmelled a lily and if you've
ever smelled a jasmine.
(09:15):
The smell is kind of somewherein between.
It's very floral, but it's kindof sweet in nature as well.
If the pollen, if you'reallergic to, like lilies and
other plants like that, it cancause a little bit of allergy
problems and they produce a lotof pollen.
Now some varieties of dragonfruit are self-fertile and they
(09:37):
can self-pollinate.
You can usually tell this isthe case if the pistil is about
the same length as all of thestamens.
So if the stigma, which is theplace on the pistil, is about
the same length as all of thestamens, so if the stigma, which
is the place on the pistilwhere pollen is deposited, is
about the same distance from thebase of the flower as all the
pollen, that kind of makes sense, right?
If everything is there in thesame spot, that flower can
self-pollinate.
(09:57):
Now these are co-sexual flowers, so they have both male and
female reproductive structures,a lot of varieties and the
variety that we have in thegreenhouse I believe we are.
It's never fruited, so I'm not100% sure, but I believe we have
the hylacerias and doddus, thered outside, white inside.
So on ours the pistil is longerthan the stamens, so that means
(10:22):
that the plant is not sofertile or the flowers are not
so fertile Now in some cases,and our success rate is pretty
low with this if you pollinateone of these varieties with a
different flower on the sameplant, sometimes, sometimes
you'll get pollination, and Iposted a video on my social
media of me doing exactly that.
I went up there in the middle ofthe night and it's a
(10:43):
night-blooming cactus and Ipollinated it myself.
None of them took.
None of the three took.
Now I would really need asecond plant, which is something
I'm going to kind of work on,so that maybe we can get fruit
one day so I could crosspollinate.
The challenging thing sometimesis I can't just necessarily
take a pad from one of my dragonfruits and make a second one,
(11:04):
because that's a clone, right,the genetics are the same.
So even cross pollinating, thatusually does not have a really
high success rate.
So I'm probably going to try toget some seeds.
Either I'll buy a fruit orsomething.
I'll germinate some, I'll growsome off and then maybe next
summer summer after I may beable to get some cross
pollination.
I digress they arenight-blooming cactus, which
(11:25):
means they are generallypollinated by things like moths
and bats other animals that areactive at night and it's really
cool to watch as the flower isdeveloping you'll start to see
these floral nectaries sort ofgo into overdrive.
So on the outside of the flowerbud you get little drops of
nectar that form, and thatreally makes some sense
(11:47):
evolutionarily because ifthey're going to put all of
their effort, all of theirenergy into blooming each flower
once at night, they want asmany pollinators present at that
time as possible.
So they produce this nectar totry to get moths and bats and
again other animals in the area.
They want them around when theyfinally bloom and then when
they do bloom again they'refragrant, they are large and
(12:09):
white to reflect moonlight andthey have large nectaries so
that any animals coming to feedon them have a really good
chance of pollinating them.
Now, if you read a lot ofguides, they actually recommend
and it's really reallyinteresting that you go right as
the flower opens and collectpollen and then keep it and then
wait till later in the night orearly in the morning to
(12:32):
actually deposit that pollen onthe stigma, which is interesting
.
That may be another safeguardin some of these varieties
against self pollination so that, if you know, there's a little
bit of lag time between pollenproduction and pollen drop and
the time that the femalereproductive system is really
active, so that it gives timefor animals insects to go
(12:57):
collect a lot of pollen and moveon to another flower a little
bit later.
Now I've also read stuff thatsays that you can just do it
right away and it's fine as longas you're cross-poll.
So again, I unfortunatelydidn't have any success
pollinating it, but it was fun.
I posted some pictures in thetime lapse that I will link in
the show notes of this episode.
So if you'd like to go watch it, you certainly can.
(13:18):
I would encourage you to and Iwould love it if you did.
But yeah, there's such coolplants, there's such cool plants
, they're such cool plants.
A couple of caveats.
They're big plants, they'recool and they're very big.
So, like I said, they can growdozens of feet up a tree.
Ours is on an eight to ninefoot trellis structure and it
(13:42):
easily grows up that they'll puton a couple of inches of growth
a day in some cases.
So if you're going to get adragon fruit some things you
want to keep in mind you need awell-drained, relatively sandy
soil.
A cactus mix works well,something with a lot of perlite
or gravel works really well.
Heavy clay content in your soilor in your potting media is not
necessarily recommended, butyou can get away with it if you
can add gypsum and some otherthings to it.
(14:04):
You want to water thoroughlywhen you do water, but you don't
want to keep it soggy all thetime again.
It likes a well-drained soil.
Now, this is a tropical orsemi-tropical plant, so you do
need to water it and it likessome humidity, but overall it is
also still a cactus right andyou need room for it to sprawl.
Now this plant does have afairly shallow root, again like
(14:26):
a lot of cacti, and not anextensive root system.
The nice thing about that isyou can keep it in a large pot.
As a tropical plant, it wouldneed to come in in the winter.
It does not tolerate anythingeven close to a frost.
Ok, so anything below about 10Celsius can kill the plant.
It can definitely slow it downand reduce flowering and fruit
(14:48):
production all that.
So it's a cool plant.
It is easy to propagate, eitherthrough seed or through cutting
up the pads.
There's a lot of options withit and I just I think it's
something so cool and so if youlive somewhere where it's really
hot in the summer, it likes hotweather.
If you've got a bright porch,you could put it on a large pot,
maybe something to trellis iton.
(15:09):
I think it's a great option.
No-transcript, but yeah, dragonfruits are great.
Go watch the video, let me knowwhat you think, and I hope this
(15:32):
gave you a little bit ofinformation about them.
Okay, so the second question fortoday is a really interesting
one.
That came from Threads and I'll, by the way, give credit to all
the question askers down in theshow notes.
But this person asked what isthe environmental impact of
lichens?
And I thought about this for awhile and I was like, is there
(15:57):
one?
I mean, of course there is.
It's a living thing on thisplanet.
We all have an impact on theenvironment.
Everything that's alive on thisimpact on this planet impacts
the environment.
So I thought, sure, let's lookinto it.
Lichens are fascinating,fascinating, and it turns out I
really didn't know much aboutthem.
Now I want to preface this insaying lichens are not really
(16:18):
plants.
They're not really not plants.
They live in sort of their ownlittle weird gray area.
Ok, lichens are very strange.
They're also not really asingle organism.
Every individual lichen is madeup of two different organisms,
which is such a just a weirdthing to think about.
So they are a symbiotic colonybetween a species of fungi and a
(16:42):
species of algae, between aspecies of fungi and a species
of algae.
Now, there are thousands ofdifferent what we would call
species of lichen or lichens allover the world, thousands in
North America, thousands ofdifferent climates.
They're on, I believe, everycontinent except Antarctica, and
that I'm even not sure about.
Now, again, I don't know a tonabout lichens.
(17:04):
So if you're a lichen expert,please call me, shoot me an
email.
I would love to talk to you onthe show and take corrections
for all the stuff that I'm sureI'm about to mess up.
I researched, I read severalarticles about lichens and I am
beginning to think that I'm moreconfused now than when I
started.
But I'm going to take a run atthis because they're so
(17:24):
fascinating.
So again, what we call lichenor species of lichen is a
symbiotic relationship between afungus and an algae, and there
are thousands of species of both, and some of them live in dry
climates.
Some of them live in wetclimates dry climates.
(17:46):
Some of them live in wetclimates.
Some of them live in hot andcold or really wet or really hot
or really cold, rainforests anddeserts, and all over the place
.
In fact, we read a statisticthat lichens are actually a
dominant life form in like 7% ofour ecosystems.
They're a keystone species allover the world.
Now, if you've never seen alichen, I bet you have.
I bet you just never thoughtabout it.
(18:07):
So if you're in the woodshiking and there's this rock
that looks like it's covered inmoss, it may be moss, but odds
are good that it could be alichen.
Lichens are a variety of colors.
You'll see them in yellows andoranges, reds and greens and
whites and all kinds of colors,but a lot of times will be a
little white fringe around theoutside with some kind of color
(18:27):
in the middle.
So a lot of times what weconsider oh, that's a mossy rock
is actually a rock with lichenon it.
Now, a lichen is essentially afungus that is acting as sort of
a habitat or a superstructurethat a different kind of algae
lives on.
So the lichen provides a placefor the algae to grow, the algae
(18:48):
photosynthesizes and then feedsthe fungus and you get this
symbiotic, really fascinatingrelationship.
Now a lot of different animalseat lichen, from reindeer to
mice and birds and otherherbivores.
It's a huge food source for alot of different things.
(19:09):
It also helps in soil creation,which I just thought was so
fascinating.
So all the soil out there andjust for a quick soils lesson.
Soil is made of sand, silt andclay.
The difference between sand,silt and clay is the size of the
particle Sand is biggest, siltis in the middle and clay is the
smallest.
Now, these come from differenttypes of parent materials, but
(19:32):
we call it a soil if it hasthose three things basically in
them, and the biggestdifferences are sizes.
So all of our soil comes fromrocks, from mountains, through
erosion whether that's winderosion, sun freezing, cracking
water, all kinds of things theybreak rocks down into smaller
particles that become the soilthat's deposited elsewhere.
(19:55):
Lichen also play a big role inthis.
So as the lichen grows on rocks, the fungi mines between
particles in the rocks andbreaks off little bits and over
time this creates soildeposition.
So without lichens we wouldactually have a lot less soil.
They have played a major role increating soil on this planet,
(20:19):
also because they areessentially made of algae.
Algae photosynthesizes.
Photosynthesis makes oxygen.
So, in addition to all thetrees and grasses and plants and
waterborne algae and everythingelse, lichens are producing
oxygen on this planet.
They are photosyntheticorganisms and it's really cool,
(20:39):
really cool.
But one of the major thingsthat we as humans kind of look
at lichen for are diagnostictools.
So they get all their food fromthe air, right, they pull their
nutrients essentially directlyfrom the air.
They don't have roots, they'renot plants, they're plant
adjacent, but they're not plants.
Okay, algae is a photosyntheticorganism and so it turns
(21:03):
sunlight and carbon dioxide andwater and other things into
sugars.
Those sugars are used to runall the processes in that
organism.
So as they're growing they areabsorbing air.
It turns out that lichen adaptrelatively slowly to their
(21:23):
environment.
Now, that's not true of all ofthem, but a lot of them take
time to adapt and maybe it'sbecause of the symbiotic
relationship.
There's a lot of moving partsthere, so to speak.
They don't move really.
That's maybe beyond the scopeof this.
They're complicated and becauseof that complexity I think a
lot of times they evolverelatively slowly and they're
(21:43):
adapted to a specificenvironment, right, because it's
a specific species of fungithat's endemic to an area and a
specific species of algae that'salso endemic to that area.
So they are very dependent onthe environment.
Scientists kind of look at themlike a canary in a coal mine.
Right, when the lichen startsuffering or we get a big
(22:07):
population explosion in aspecific kind of lichen, it
tells us a lot about the airthey're essentially consuming.
Is there more nitrogen in theair?
Are they able to produce moreof themselves?
Is there more carbon in the air?
Can they photosynthesize at ahigher rate?
Are oxygen rates lower?
So we can use lichens as adiagnostic tool for what the air
(22:31):
is doing, for what theclimate's doing.
They're going to be sensitiveto water.
They're going to be sensitiveto heat, wind speeds, nitrogen
or let's call it air content,all the things that go into
making something like that grow.
Little tweaks in that can causebig differences.
So by actually looking atdifferent species of lichens we
(22:57):
can tell oh, this one reallylikes nitrogen and the
population is exploding.
We probably have more nitrogeneither in our rainfall or in our
air.
Oh, but this one doesn't likenitrogen.
So same answer, or vice versa.
We can tell a lot about theenvironment by what the lichen
is doing.
So to answer the question,lichen has enormous, enormous
(23:23):
environmental impacts, both onthe way the environment
functions as part of the trophicsystem, as part of the whole
thing that things eat and theenergy transfer from the sun to
everything else, but also, again, as scientists who are trying
to monitor the environment andfigure out what's going on.
They are such an importantdiagnostic tool, such an
(23:43):
important diagnostic tool.
I am going to have to like findbooks on lichen now.
I don't need another degree.
In fact, I've been told by mywife that I should not get
another degree, but I would loveto study them more.
So, again, if you are a what alichenologist, a someone who
studies lichen I actually don'teven know what that would be Hit
(24:04):
me up, I would love to talk toyou, I would love to interview
you on the show.
If you know someone who is oneof those as well, send them my
way.
But you can be sure I'm goingto be reading about these weird
little creatures a lot movingforward.
I'm going to take a quick break,do some mid-roll stuff.
I've got some stuff to tell youand then we'll be back, and
I've got two more questions toanswer.
Well, hey there, welcome to themid-roll.
(24:26):
I hope you're enjoying thesequestions and their answers.
I always have fun doing these.
They're really interestingepisodes for me.
I get to do some research, Iget to learn some new things and
I get to share them with you.
So if you have questions you'dlike for me to answer on the
show, I plan on doing a few moreof these this year, hopefully,
(24:47):
and I would love to answer yourquestion.
But until then, tell yourhouseplants I said hello, that I
miss them, that I hope they'rewell.
I hope you're well too.
Thanks for listening toPlantthropology and being a part
of what happens here throughinconsistent scheduling and long
droughts between episodes andjust me rambling on this podcast
.
It means a lot that you'restill here and I do this because
I enjoy getting to talk to you.
(25:07):
I enjoy getting to talk toreally cool plant people and
just explore this world andlearn more about it.
I enjoy learning more.
If you would like to connectwith Plantthropology, look me up
on social media.
We are either like to connectwith Plantthropology.
Look me up on social media.
We are either Plantthropologyor PlantthropologyPod all over
the place.
You can get me personally atThePlantProf and you can send me
(25:29):
an email at PlantthropologyPodat gmailcom If you've got
suggestions for guests.
If you would like to be a guest, if you want to just give me
some feedback, I would love somuch to hear from you.
If you want to just give mesome feedback, I would love so
much to hear from you.
Thanks to the Texas TechDepartment of Plain Soil Science
for letting me do the show andsupporting the show.
Thanks to the Davis College ofAgricultural Science and Natural
Resources for the same, andthanks mostly to you, the
(25:52):
listener, for being a part of it.
If you want to supportplanthropology in other ways,
the best way to do that is totell someone about the show.
Tell a friend.
Word of mouth is still the bestway to get the word out about
the show.
If you want to leave me areview on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or anywhere else, itwould mean the world to me if
(26:15):
you did that.
If you do it and send me to myemail or my social media a
screenshot of the review, I'llsend you some stickers and stuff
, because I'm getting newstickers and I have a whole
bunch I need to get rid of thatare already here.
And if you want to financiallysupport the show, you can go to
planthropologypodcastcom andsnag some merch, or you can go
to buymeacoffeecom slashplanthropology and for the price
of a cup of coffee you can buyme a cup of coffee and some show
(26:38):
hosting and production costsand all of that.
A couple of other things Iwanted to talk about.
I wrote a book last year it'sbeen out over a year which is
bonkers to me.
It's called Plants to theRescue.
It's about climate change andhow plants and science can help
us deal with that issue, and ifyou haven't picked one up yet,
if you haven't seen it, I wouldencourage you to do that.
Go, check out a local bookshop,go to the library, and I would
(27:07):
just.
It would mean the world to meand if you have read it, drop me
a review for that as well.
Also, it has been my pleasurethis summer to get to partner
with the Lubbock Arts Allianceto promote one of their new
citywide art exhibits calledDelightful Fantasy Flowers by
artist Glory Hartsfield.
Now these are spread out allover the city.
There are four installationsalong our highways.
It's a collaboration withLubbock Arts Alliance, the
(27:27):
Tornado Industrial Arts, theartist herself and the Texas
Department of Transportation.
Now, when I say that these arebig metal flower sculptures, I'm
not underselling it.
They are 13 feet tall.
They're brightly colorful.
They represent a lot ofcomposite flowers you might find
in your landscape.
We're actually doing a videoseries right now talking about
plants that resemble them, thatyou could use in your own yard.
(27:51):
So go check out the LubbockArts Alliance.
If you're in Lubbock, texas, godrive around town and look at
the delightful fantasy flowersinstallations.
They're so cool.
You can see them from your carjust driving by.
You can see them from a longway off.
I'll post an image with theshow notes or a link to the
image in the show notes whereyou can see the locations of all
of them.
They're such cool exhibits.
(28:11):
I was thrilled when I was askedto be a part of it because I
love the Limit Guards Alliance,I love supporting community art
and I love supporting educationabout plants.
Okay, now time to answer somemore questions.
Let's do it.
So the third and fourthquestion I got are sort of
related.
They go hand in hand in someways and I'm going to take them
(28:33):
one at a time, but I hope youcan see how they sort of work
together.
Someone asked is someonestudying how backyard gardeners
have to shift their growingseasons or crops due to changing
climates, due to climate change, and the answer is a big yes, a
huge, massive, incredibly largeyes.
There is so much work goinginto what's going to happen with
(28:55):
our crops.
What plants can we grow basedon a change in climate and based
on changing seasons andseasonal variations and patterns
and longer growing seasons,which sounds like maybe that
would be a good thing?
I don't know, it's a mixed bag,right?
Maybe the things that wouldbloom at a certain time of year
(29:17):
and be done before it's cold maynot do that, or they may bloom
too early and get hit by a latefreeze.
There's so much that goes intoit.
If you've been sort offollowing these kinds of things
the past few months, the pastyear or so, you may know that
the USDA, the US Department ofAgriculture, unveiled its new
plant hardiness zone map and inthat pretty much all the
(29:38):
hardiness zones in the USshifted higher.
We're in higher zones than weused to be.
Now this is an interestingmetric and it doesn't
necessarily mean what a lot ofpeople think it means, so I
wanted to talk about that forjust a second.
This is a measure of a 30 yearaverage of the average annual
(29:59):
lowest temperature on that year,the annual lowest temperature
on that year.
They take 30 years of data andaggregate them, and there's
usually a two or three year lagbetween the current year and
when all the data is processed.
So we're looking at data fromat this point, 2020, 2021, 22
and there.
So it is not an averagetemperature.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how hot average
(30:19):
temperature.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how hot it gets.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how long it stays cold
during the winter.
All it tells you is in thisgiven location, what is the
coldest it got.
Okay, so I'm in zone 7A, now 7B.
We actually just got bumped up,which means that our average
annual coldest temperature isbetween zero and 10 degrees
(30:40):
Fahrenheit, which is pretty cold.
It's pretty cold here.
That does not tell you that itwill get to 114 degrees in the
summer and it does not tell youthat it will be 40, 50 degrees
most of the winter, with somefreezing temperatures at night,
really pretty mild.
So this is a useful tool, but itshould not be the only thing we
look at when we think about oh,everything is warmer,
(31:03):
everything is warmer.
These have been a couple, threeof our hottest summers on
record.
It seems like we break a newrecord just about every day.
That's not great, but the USDAhardiness zone map is not the
be-all end-all as far as thatgoes.
What that does tell us.
If we look at the big picture,though, is that we're warming up
right, and if you look atweather data climate data we can
(31:28):
see that our growing times, ourgrowing seasons, have
absolutely shifted, and thatmeans a couple of things.
It means that, maybe, thingsthat we have grown, you know,
historically in the southern US,we are going to either be able
(31:48):
to, or maybe have to, push alittle bit farther north, so we
have to think about okay, how dowe address this?
When can we plant?
How do we go about it?
It's going to get harder andharder to grow certain crops in
hotter climates, and crops thatmaybe need more chilling in the
winter, like a lot of our treefruits, a lot of our tree crops.
It may get harder to grow incooler climates or just in
(32:10):
general.
So, yes, there is a lot ofresearch that goes into this.
Pa published some data through2023, looking at the average
length of growing season in thecontiguous 48 states the lower
48.
Okay, and the long term averageand we see some large
(32:31):
deviations from our long termaverage.
And if you look at, you know100 years of data, 130 years of
data.
Here there are some dips.
In the early 1900s there was adip in our growing season about
seven days shorter than thelong-term average.
Between 1930 and about 1990,we've been hovering right around
(32:52):
zero or right around thelong-term average number of
growing days.
Now, this is not a hard number,right, because this is an
average of lots of differentclimates or lots of different
regions.
But starting in about 1990, wesee this huge spike in the
number of growing days in aseason and we're up nearly two
weeks.
Our growing season on averageacross the continental US is up
(33:17):
nearly two weeks.
Now that may sound like a goodthing and again, in some cases I
guess it could be right.
We have longer to grow crops,but that also changes when we
plant.
It also changes how we plant.
What also that doesn't captureis the amount of carbon in the
air, the amount of carbondioxide out there.
Yes, plants like that to apoint, but it also creates more
(33:39):
heat, right, we have hottersummer days.
That makes it harder to growcertain things.
So as a backyard gardener.
That's actually something wereally have to be paying
attention to and there's a lotof science that goes into it.
Now most of the research isbeing done in more commercial
operations because that's easierto study and easier to quantify
(33:59):
.
But if you think of the impactsthat we're going to see in the
agricultural setting in openfields, that's probably going to
be amplified in cityenvironments.
We get urban heat islandeffects, we get heat domes, we
get increased carbon dioxideoutput in maybe carbon dioxide
in the air from exhausts, we getmore pollution, we get water
(34:21):
problems.
So as we see some of theseclimate growing season issues in
our ag settings, we'reabsolutely going to see them in
our home gardens.
I think some things that a lotof home gardeners probably need
to do is think about how do weadd shade.
How do we in certain placesright, this is not true
(34:43):
everywhere, but if you live in aplace where the sun is super
intense, where your humidity islow, maybe you get a lot of
solar intensity.
Where it's really hot, we getlong days.
Probably thinking about how dowe provide some afternoon shade
to our garden plants is not abad idea.
When we say full sun, we'retalking six, eight, 10 hours of
direct sunlight in normalconditions, and then much more
(35:06):
than that, we start to run intoproblems.
So we need to think about that.
We need to think about makingsure we can provide enough water
and nutrients and everythingelse to our plants, and we need
to make sure that we are growingthings that are well acclimated
to our area, to where we'retrying to grow.
So that might mean having toshift our practices a little bit
(35:26):
, having to think differentlyabout what we grow and when we
grow it and how we grow it.
There's a lot that goes intothis y'all.
So, yeah, there is a lot ofresearch going into how this is
going to affect backyardgardeners, but I think we need
to be looking at it on a globalscale as well, on an
agricultural and just societalfood supply scale as well,
(35:47):
because that's kind of scaryscary to me.
But this was not.
This is and I hope youunderstand like my intent is
never to be like doom and gloom,because there are very smart
people out there working on it.
Right, and, yes, maybe it's anuphill battle, but if you go
back and listen to Dr CatherineHayhoe's episode from from
(36:08):
earlier in the year, she issomeone who is in this every day
.
Right, she's a climatescientist who is in this every
day and she's hopeful.
She presents these issues notas a oh, we're doomed.
She's not a doomerist at all.
She's hopeful about what we cando and if we're able to work
(36:29):
together, if we're able to be Idon't know cooperative and
open-minded and all of that, wecan still steer the ship back in
the right direction.
But that's something that'sgoing to take all of us to do
for sure.
So my last question actuallycame from my friend, shannon
Perry, who is the writer,producer, brain behind the Oz
nine podcast, which, if you golisten to episode 100 of the Oz
(36:52):
nine podcast, I actually got tobe a voice actor and it was so
much fun and I played myself inthat.
I was, I was me.
So I don't know if that meansthat the Oz nine exists in our
universe or if I exist in theiruniverse.
I don't know which one of thoseis more concerning to me.
Don't just go listen to episode100.
(37:13):
It won't make any sense.
You should go and catch up.
I know full well that y'all areout here listening to like 30
hour long audio books.
These are 20 minute episodes.
20 minute episodes, you cancatch up.
It won't take you that long,Okay, uh, if you've listened to
the Lord of the Rings on audiobooks, if you listen to Brandon
Sanderson, you can definitely gocatch up on Oz nine, and I
(37:33):
think you definitely should, andthen tell me what you think
about episode 100.
It was so much fun.
Anyway, shannon asks what is thesingle best plant related thing
I can do to help theenvironment, and that is such a
good question and I wish I hadsome really scientific, really
well thought out, really wellresearched answer to this.
(37:56):
And I kind of don't, becausethere's never going to be just
one thing, right, there's nevergoing to be just one thing, one
action, one silver bullet, so tospeak, one bandaid that's going
to fix this big problem that ittook 8 billion of us and 120,
(38:17):
150 years to create.
So when I think about what isthe best thing that someone can
do to help the environment, itis to just start, to just start.
And in plant-related things,just grow something.
Just start growing something.
Start educating a friend aboutwhat you've learned about plants
(38:39):
, just start Audrey Hepburn, whois an actor but also a
humanitarian, and what a lot ofpeople don't know she was an
avid gardener an avid gardenerand she talked a lot about how
she used her garden to escapeeverything else in her life.
But Audrey Hepburn once said toplant a garden is to believe in
(39:00):
tomorrow.
To plant a garden is to believein tomorrow, and I think in our
fight against climate change,in our fight to save us and save
(39:24):
our environment, hope is ourbest and strongest and, in some
ways, most radical weapon.
So plant a garden, whether thatis you planting a peach tree or
tomato plants or whatever inyour backyard, or growing some
herbs in your kitchen in littlepots, or doing some stuff on
your patio.
(39:44):
Maybe you've got an old bathtubthat you put plants in.
Whatever it is, and however itis that you do, it, just start,
just start.
We a lot of times let our fearand our anxiety about the future
immobilize and it makes usstress and worry and have
anxiety.
But hoping is a radical act.
(40:04):
It is a radical act and it is apowerful act.
There I cannot overstate in myown mind and in my own life how
powerful hope is and how much itcan do.
So plant a garden, grow a plant,water something.
Be better about making sureyou're planting well adapted
(40:25):
species.
Don't spread invasives.
Cut down your Bradford peartree and plant something better.
Use a local farmers market,whatever it is.
That is the place that you canstart.
Do that, do that and planting agarden doesn't have to be
literally planting a garden.
It can be sowing the seeds ofall of these different things.
(40:46):
Taking your kid to the libraryto find information about the
environment, teaching them tovalue the plants around them a
little bit more, fight plantblindness, all of that.
There is so much.
We can do so many little thingsthat seem insignificant, but it
turns out.
All of that.
There is so much.
We can do so many little thingsthat seem insignificant, but it
turns out that all of ustogether are not insignificant,
right, and if we all do onelittle thing, one little thing,
(41:09):
if we all just start, we can doso much, we can accomplish so
much and we can save ourselves,we can save this environment and
and I think that that isincredible and I think that is
powerful.
So that is my non-scientific,philosophical answer to what is
the best plant thing we can doto help the environment.
(41:30):
Um, again, if you want to learnmore about environment like
dealing with the environment,fighting climate change.
Go listen to Dr Hayhoe's episodeI believe that was 102.
And there's so many good thingsout there, so many things you
can listen to, so much you canlearn, and I hope that we never
stop learning.
So thanks for listening, thanksfor being a part of this,
(41:52):
thanks for sending yourquestions.
I really these are, I think, asfar as like solo episodes that
I do, these are by far myfavorite this summer.
I'll probably have one moresolo episode coming out right
around the start of the semesterin a couple of weeks, and then
I have some great guests linedup for the fall.
So lots more plant anthropologycoming.
Send me your questions, send meyour thoughts, send me your
(42:13):
comments.
Follow along on social media.
Thanks again to you forlistening.
It means the world to me.
It really, really genuinelydoes, and it gives me hope,
which is something that I carrywith me as I go through my day.
So you know I love you, youknow I think you're the best.
Be kind to one another.
If you have not been kind toone another so far, give that a
(42:34):
shot.
It's pretty cool, good way tobe.
Keep being really cool.
Plant people and I will talk toyou next time.
(42:55):
Thank you.
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