Velvety Underground

I’m sorry I missed February, but I started the in-depth work on my thesis, which makes it difficult to get into the blogging mindset. However, I have found another parasite that has managed to get listed¹. They live on the bodily fluids of a single species, rarely even seeing the light of day. After that description, I want you to imagine an orchid.
Now, look at this picture.

Image from ARKive

This is the Underground Orchid (Rhizanthella gardneri). While many orchids are parasitic—living as the botanical equivalent of a louse—they produce pretty flowers, so no one thinks twice about trying to save them. The Underground Orchid’s lifestyle is not much different, except for the fact that it looks like a root with a tumor. It lives in the root system of the Broom Honey Myrtle, a pine-like tree from Australia. This orchid produces no chlorophyll, because that would be pointless if the flower might break the surface. Instead, it gets its energy and nutrients from the Myrtle, but it’s not as simple as that. It never is.

I had originally thought that parasitic plants work by putting its roots into the roots of the host and effectively sucking the tree’s blood. Some do. The Underground Orchid, however, is myco-heterotrophic. This means that there is a fungus living in the Myrtle’s roots, sucking out its juices. The orchid then subsists on the juices of the fungus, making this some sort of strange nesting-doll version of parasitism². The end result is still the orchid parasitizing the tree, but with some (unwilling) help from a root fungus.

The Underground Orchid relies on the existence of the Broom Honey Myrtle, and tracts of these trees are being cleared to make way for agriculture. People are also attributing a decrease in health of the myrtle to a decrease in the numbers of the orchid. Preservation sites are being set up throughout the Underground Orchids’ range to help save them. Also, botanists are also working on finding a way to breed these root-flowers in captivity.

¹Just so you know, the Pygmy Hog-Sucking Louse managed to get a mention on QI.
²I’m sure there is some Australian burrowing insect that would suck the juices out of the orchid, making this even more recursive.

Some Crazy Bastard

I’m sorry that I’ve been slacking; I’ve got no real excuse, but I am having problems finding EUTs with enough information for a blog post. It’s exactly the problem I mentioned in the Hunter Slug post: the species that really need our help are the ones that we don’t know anything about. On a different note, the WWF has once again given reason to explain the existence of this blog. My grandparents just got their 2008 calendar last week. Out of 13 pictures, one is an amphibian¹, two are birds, and the rest, of course, are fuzzy, fuzzy mammals (well, I suppose the hippo and the whale aren’t really fuzzy, but you get the idea).

Image from IUCN

On yet another note, I believe this plant’s name ranks among the worst possible for a plant. It is the Bastard Quiver Tree (Aloe pillansii). Again, no explanation is given for the name, but it may be a, ahem, bastardization of the local term “Basterkokerboom²”. If you know your houseplants (or skin products) well enough, you probably recognize the genus Aloe. Yes, this thirty-foot tall tree from the deserts of Africa is a close relative to Aloe vera (which is found growing, among other places, rampantly in pots at my parents’ house).

I suppose saying it lives in the African desert is being unspecific. It inhabits the semiarid Karoo³ region of southern Africa, specifically on the north end of South Africa and south end of Namibia. Being one of the very few plants over about a foot tall gives it some important roles in the ecosystem, such as bird roost and food, and moisture provider through its thick leaves. It more than likely is pollinated by birds.

With fewer than 200 plants, it easily qualifies for IUCN’s critically endangered category. Why it’s endangered is a harder question, with answers ranging from grazing baboons to overgrazing to mining--or, of course, all of the above. At least some people are worried about it: International trade of the plant has been banned by CITES, so it struck me as odd that many of the informative sites about the plant were by horticulturalists. Local South African schools received puzzles, information packs, and worksheets about saving the Basterkokerboom.

¹The Red-eyed Tree Frog, only the most photographed frog in the world.
²This is complete speculation through minimal evidence. Don’t cite me as a source for this.
³Off topic: Microsoft Word’s spellchecker doesn’t know the words “monotreme,” “echolocating,” or even “blog,” but it takes “Karoo” without a second thought.

Maxwell's Silver Sword

My parents just came back from a cruise in Hawai’i¹, and I felt compelled to ask if they found any exciting wildlife. They had, in fact, found a plant with this blog in mind. Instead of saddling Florabot with this one, I figured I’d write my first plant post.

Image by Dan Yaussy

The Hawaiian Silversword (Argyroxiphium sandwicense) is a spiky, once-flowering relative of asters and sunflowers. There are two subspecies, the Halekala Silversword (ssp. macrocephalum), shown above, and found on Maui, and the Mauna Kea Silversword (ssp. sandwicense), which is found on that mountain on the Big Island. There are some differences between the subspecies. This means, that to tell which one you’re looking at, it helps to have a botanist and a dichotomous key.

The Silversword gets its name from the sharp, sword-like leaves that are covered with silvery hairs. These hairs reflect the hot Hawaiian sun, cooling down the plant, and the bristly leaves protect the center from predation. They grow on the sides of volcanoes with very shallow roots. They spend fifteen to fifty years growing as a short, sharp rosette, and then send a single stalk up to nine feet high with fifty to six hundred flowers², set seed, and die.

Since the roots are so shallow, goats, sheep, and cattle easily uproot this plant when trying to eat it. Other invasive species, like Argentine ants, are also causing problems. Hikers can accidentally do same, or intentionally. Apparently, hikers used to pick them as proof they climbed the mountains where they grow. There’s no information on when “used to” was.

Lots of people are working on saving this prickle-ball. For example, people at the University of Arizona are currently working on making sure the Mauna Kea Silverswords don’t become terribly inbred after only a few were saved in the late ‘70s. Also, better signage and visitor education has helped remove some threats.

¹I suppose I really can’t complain.
²They’re fairly small flowers.

I'm a Bleedin' Volcano

I did it to a lesser extent about two months ago, but we’re gonna try for another Endangered Ugly Ecosystem. This one is volcanic, reptilian, and arid. There’s only one problem: it’s immensely famous for being an ecological wonderland. Which it is. But it also looks much like this:

Image by me

Welcome to the real Galápagos. Yes, the cactus in the picture is listed as vulnerable (lava cactus, Brachycereus nesioticus). The islands were formed (are forming, really) by volcanic activity, so there’s been no contact with the South American continent, some 600 miles away. This means everything that arrives there must be able to manage at least a 600 mile drift, usually on mats of vegetation blown over from wherever they came. This leads to an over-representation in reptiles, because they’re really good at managing a long time without any food or water. Birds get blown off course in the process of migrating, but they’re not ugly enough for inclusion. Mammals tend to have much too fast a metabolism to let them manage months without food, so the only (non-sea-faring; there are sea lions) mammals on the islands are the ever-present mice, which can survive practically anything. There are also bats, which probably got blown off course like the birds.

What EUTs call the Galápagos home? Well, the marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), and land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus and C. pallidus) certainly fit the bill. The giant tortoises (Geochelone nigra, with many, many subspecies) may not be ugly enough, but it’s certainly plenty endangered. In my attempt to be more welcoming to all kingdoms¹, there are also the cacti: the lava cactus mentioned earlier, an endemic species of prickly pear (Opuntia galapageia, also with a few subspecies), and the candelabra cactus (Jasminocereus thouarsii). There are plenty of other endangered things, but most of them are too pretty for me to talk about.

Why are they endangered? Goats, mostly. They escape farms or get released by sailors² and then they run rampant, eating tons of vegetation, leaving none for the tortoises or land iguanas, and stepping on all the reptiles’ nests. Remember the issues the blue iguanas had with cats and rats and dogs? Well, cats and dogs and (non-endemic) rats have been introduced in the Galápagos, so the iguanas here have the exact same problem. And, since none of them are found anywhere else in the world, the animals there are starting at a disadvantage.

And to top it off, hundreds of people are flocking to the Galápagos each day, walking around, taking pictures, et cetera, et cetera. And what does this do for the islands? Funds the conservation, as one pays for entrance into the Galápagos National Park and into the Charles Darwin Research Station. The rules about what the groups are able to do, always with a trained guide, are strict enough that tourists do not adversely affect the wildlife³. What are the conservation efforts doing? There are successful breeding programs for the tortoises⁴ and the land iguanas at the Research Station. There is lots of work going into the goat eradication program, which at times involves people in helicopters with rifles. If any of my readers have had to deal with invasive species closer to home⁵, this will not seem like overkill, and it is certainly getting the job done.

Edit: I've just put up a new t-shirt design. Enjoy.

¹I’m still looking for an endangered bacterium. No luck so far.
²Alright, sailors releasing them were mostly in the 1700s, but it’s taken them until recently to get rid of those.
³Stay on the trail. No touching animals. Do not take sand, shells, bones or any other item from the island. Wash your shoes between islands to prevent mixing sand. Seriously.
⁴Baby tortoises are much too cute to be discussed here. Oh well.
⁵For example, have wanted to take a gallon of gasoline and a match to multiflora rose.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

It’s not easy being green. Each animal represented in this blog, despite its purported “ugliness,” has one distinct advantage over its endangered plant counterparts: it is an animal. This is arguably an advantage because animals tend to attract human attention and garner our sympathies in ways that plants generally do not. I think this probably stems from a natural tendency to anthropomorphize, and therefore identify with animals in ways that just don’t come as easily when considering plants. It’s rather difficult for us to imagine how a plant might “feel” or “think.”

But as Garfman has pointed out, this blog was created in the spirit of equal-opportunity representation. Finding a suitably “ugly” species for the first plant profile proved challenging for me, however. For one thing, plants are held to different standards of beauty than animals. For another, as a botanist, I felt reluctant to assign a derisive label to any species from my chosen kingdom of study. Even though I have been known to curse while clawing my way through dense, thorny undergrowth, grumble about garden weeds, and despise invasive plant infestations, the source my vexation is only contextual. I was hard-pressed to think of a plant I would call flat-out ugly, because my fascination tends to override my aesthetic sensibilities.

It was after much deliberation that I chose the plant featured as this week’s endangered ugly thing: Rafflesia arnoldii. This species (and in fact the whole genus) is highly unusual in many regards.

The genus Rafflesia is native to tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, and all members of the genus are either threatened or endangered. At least two species are probably already extinct.

These plants are commonly known as “stinking corpse lilies.” In case the name wasn’t enough of a clue, they produce malodorous blossoms that smell like decomposing flesh or feces. The reason? Well, just as we’ve seen that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the sort of bouquet that attracts one pollinator differs from the sort that attracts another. If you hadn’t guessed, R. arnoldii and the rest of the species in its genus are pollinated by carrion flies. To learn more about flowers that share this method of pollination, this site at Wayne’s Word is on of the most informative (and humorous) I have encountered.

The flower itself is also a sight to behold. R. arnoldii has the distinction of producing the world’s largest flower. (Amorphophallus titanum, the Titan Arum, loses this contest on a technicality, as its huge flowering structure is actually composed of many smaller flowers). R. arnoldii’s flower buds are the size of cabbage heads, and when these finally open, the blossom can be reach up to 3 feet in diameter and weigh up to 25 pounds. Looking like something reminiscent of a Mario Bros. videogame, its five sepals are leathery, usually red or orange in color, and spotted with light-colored “warts.”

Image from Southern Illinois University

Additionally, the genus Rafflesia is atypical because all of its members are endoparasitic; that is, they live entirely within another plant (in this case, plants of the genus Tetrastigma, which are related to grape vines) and lack chlorophyll necessary to produce their own food. They are without stems, roots, or leaves. In a sense, they are tapeworms of the plant world. The only time Rafflesia are visible, in fact, is when they are at their reproductive stage; otherwise they exist within the Tetrastigma host vine as threadlike strands of tissue.

So picture this: an enormous flower bursting out of a vine on the floor of a lush tropical rainforest, emitting a rotten stench which is attracting flies. Hardly compares to a sunny field of daisies or a garden of roses, does it? Therefore I feel no qualms in calling R. arnoldii an “ugly” plant. “Weirdly intriguing,” yes. Conventionally “pretty,” no. In any case, probably not something your sweetheart would be thrilled to receive on a special occasion.

According to a 1988 article published in the American Journal of Botany (full text can be found here if you have access to JSTOR), the primary threat is habitat destruction, a theme we’ve encountered over and over again. There is a twist, however, which has to do with the plants’ method of reproduction. Rafflesia plants are dioecious, a fancy term which biologists use to denote that male and female sexes occur in separate organisms. This means that the flowers of a Rafflesia plant either have male sex organs or female sex organs, but not both, as is the case with many plants. In order for fertilization (and thus successful reproduction) to occur, both male and female plants must be present and flowering at the same time. As this source lucidly explains, this situation does not always occur. Rafflesia flowers take a long time (9-10 months) to develop, and there is a high mortality rate. Once open, they last for only a brief window of time (3-5 days). With habitat fragmentation, the chance of a male and female flower being in bloom at the same time while in close proximity to each other is greatly diminished. The situation is further complicated by the fact that even when successful fertilization takes place, the resultant seeds must find their way to a host vine to propagate.

Little is known about Rafflesia because its very nature, in addition to its rarity, makes it difficult to study. As I see it, however, the source of hope for saving these plants is that because of their uniqueness they have managed to draw much interest from both the scientific and lay communities. Efforts have been made to protect them, but as long as the rainforest habitat they occupy continues to disappear, so will they.