Who Turned Out the Light?

With the days growing ever shorter, I find myself thinking about light and how we tend to take for granted the hard work that plants do, harnessing the energy from the sun. Photosynthesis is the beginning of most food chains on earth, the exceptions being bacteria (Archaea) that can obtain energy from inorganic chemicals like sulphur and ammonia. But since we don’t eat bacterial ooze for breakfast, this process remains relatively unimportant to humans. Photosynthesis is what gives us life!

Animals and fungi are incapable of photosynthesizing; they have to “eat” plants to stay alive. Even meat-eaters (i.e. carnivores) are ultimately dependent on plants for their survival, because they eat animals that eat plants or phytoplankton. Further, the oxygen that plants produce is also required by animals to breathe. Thus, we depend on plants for our very lives.

Some northern plants are “evergreen”, which lets them begin photosynthesizing as soon as the ground thaws in spring. In contrast, deciduous plants have to grow a whole new set of leaves before they can begin photosynthesizing again. As there is almost continual sunlight over the summer months in the far north, tundra plants can photosynthesize almost non-stop during this time. They must quickly produce enough sugar over the short summer to stay alive, in a dormant state, over the long, dark winter.

Doing biological field work always comes with challenges. Since I began working at the Museum in 2003, the summers have been relatively wet. As a result, I’ve had to deal with muddy roads, many, many biting insects thirsty for my blood, and bootfuls of water obtained while exploring flooded wetlands. This year though, the roads were good, the biting insects non-existent, and many wetlands were so dry that I could walk right into the middle of them-no rubber boots required! In contrast, my main concern this year was possibly getting heat stroke!

Dipping my hot feet in the cool lake water at Elk Island Provincial Park felt amazing!

Out at Lake of the Woods, there are several plant species that reach the northeastern edge of their range. One is the lovely Small Purple Fringed-orchid (Platanthera psycodes). It was suspected to occur in Manitoba, but no one had actually collected a specimen until 1984. As I had never seen it before, I was thrilled to find and photograph the two plants in flower at the site.

Not far from the orchid, I saw another plant that I was on the lookout for: White Avens (Geum canadense). Although this species is relatively common in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, it has apparently never been collected in Manitoba before. I carefully removed part of the stem only (not the root) to make an herbarium specimen, after verifying that there were more than ten additional plants in the vicinity.

Finding these new, rare plant populations made the hot, July temperatures much easier to handle. The specimens collected will be carefully preserved in perpetuity at the Museum to document these plant populations for conservation purposes, and for future researchers to study.

Like many of you, I enjoy walking through my neighbourhood and smelling the sweet fragrances of the summer flowers. Unfortunately, like many things, flowers are ephemeral. When I see a flower, I am always reminded of the Robert Herrick poem urging us to:

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.”

Since most wildflower field guides only feature pictures of the flowers and leaves, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to identify plants in the fruiting stage. So, to help our visitors identify the fruits of some of the most common plants in our province, a new case in the Museum’s foyer, called “The Importance of Being a Flower” recently opened. This case features 14 species of fruits juxtaposed with a photograph of the flower. Although fruits and seeds are not always attractive to look at, they are just as important as the flower, perhaps even more so, for they carry the DNA of another generation of plants in them. Flowers may only last a day, but seeds can last for decades or even centuries.  The oldest seed to ever germinate was a 2,000 year old date palm collected by archaeologists in the 1960’s from a fortress that had been build by Herod around 35BC and destroyed by Romans in 73AD (click here to read more)!

A new, temporary exhibit on seeds is in the Museum’s foyer.

In severe drought years, like the one we are experiencing this year, some summer- and autumn-blooming perennial plants will not produce flowers or seeds at all; they conserve scarce water resources by foregoing reproduction altogether.  Doing so increases the likelihood that the adult plants will survive.  Although most spring-blooming plants did produce flowers, they may produce fewer seeds to reduce water stress on the adult plant.

Museums and other institutions like gene banks and University herbaria, protect and preserve fruits, seeds and other storage tissues of economically important species, as well as wildflowers. You may have heard of one of these facilities, the so-called “doomsday vault”, formally known as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This Norwegian facility has ultra-cold storage freezers that keep the DNA in seeds from degrading rapidly, the way they would at ambient temperatures. However, that facility is our last line of defence; other collections are also needed to adequately protect plant genetic diversity, including the Plant Gene Resource of Canada in Saskatoon, (click here to learn more). Many of our most important crop species are stored in gene banks for use in breeding programs, or to use if natural disasters negatively affect crop fields or wild plant populations.

Norman Criddle collected the seeds of many species of wildflowers in the Carberry Sand Hills in the 1920’s. H9-23-142

Plants and fungi were challenging organisms to include in our new Prairies Gallery because most of our 50,000+ Museum specimens are preserved in a flattened, dehydrated condition. Not very attractive! Further, because these organisms don’t move the way animals do, people don’t seem to find them interesting. But are they really the passive, immobile creatures that we think they are? Our new exhibit case called Travelling Plants and Flying Fungi, attempts to dispel this notion. 

The fact of the matter is, plants and fungi need to be able to move, otherwise they would never have colonized land! However, it is not the adults that do the actual moving; it is their gametes (pollen) and offspring (seeds). Before a plant can make seeds, it has to have its eggs fertilized by pollen grains from another plant. Since a plant can’t just get up and walk to another plant to give it some pollen, they have to use wind or animals, called pollinators, as couriers. To depict this process, the new Museum case includes intricate 3-D models of a wind-pollinated grass and four animal-pollinated flowers, as well as their pollinators, instead of flattened plants. 

The plant models were created by the Museum’s talented Diorama & Collections Technician. Two of the models are real plants that were “mummified”, and then painted to look alive. The other three are entirely artificial. To make them, a plant was collected, and then molds made of the parts. These molds were used to create fake leaves, stems, flowers and fruits, which were then assembled together and painted. 

Once a plant is pollinated, seeds, protected inside fruits, develop. Seeds also need to disperse, and, once again, wind and animals are the couriers. To illustrate the different methods of dispersal, various seeds and fruits from the Museum’s collection were selected for display. 

Some plants, fungi and lichens do not produce multi-celled seeds; they produce tiny, single-celled structures called spores. Since they are so small, they typically disperse very well in the wind. Specimens of several common prairie spore-producers, including fungi and club-moss, are displayed in between the plant models. 

Manitoba prairies have many fascinating plants, fungi and lichens in them. How they survive and reproduce is now one of the stories we tell in the Museum. My only regret is that we couldn’t include more species in the gallery. Hopefully, this new case will inspire our visitors to spend more time paying attention to, and appreciating, the plants in our wild prairies. 

Lichens grow in the patterns they do to maximize the amount of light they intercept; some species look like tree branches (called fruticose = branch-like lichens) for this reason. Other lichens are leaf-like (i.e. foliose), or crusty (i.e. crustose). Some lichens living in really harsh environments (like the Antarctic) are cryptoendoliths, meaning that they live inside the rock, penetrating the tiny spaces in between rock crystals.

In the prairies, lichens often grow in hot, sunny habitats, such as sandy soils, and on glacially-deposited rocks. They are also common on fenceposts and abandoned human artifacts, like collapsing homesteads and rusty ploughs. In forested areas, lichens are common, growing on trees, as well as mossy, forest floors. In the Canadian Shield, rock outcrops are often almost completely covered by lichens. In urban areas, lichens are sometimes found on old buildings, like the legislature. Different species grow on these different substrates (hardwood vs. softwood, sandy soil vs. clayey soil, granite vs. limestone) so make sure you record this information when trying to identify lichens.

Since they don’t need soil, lichens are some of the first organisms that begin growing after large disasters wipe out all vegetation in an area. They are often the first to arrive after hot fires or mining activity (such as sand, gravel and coal mining). Acids in the lichens break down rocks, contributing to soil formation. Lichens can completely desiccate when it is dry, growing again when it rains. Due to this periodic desiccation, lichens tend to grow very slowly, reaching extremely old ages. Some lichens can be aged the way trees are: by counting their growth rings. Some lichens (i.e. yellow-green map lichens) have been dated as being over 8,600 years old.

Lichens reproduce themselves vegetatively, by breaking off into tiny pieces, and both sexually and asexually. Sexual fruiting bodies of various kinds (e.g. pycnidia, asci, apothecia etc.) are produced by the fungus. They release small, single-celled spores which germinate into new, partner-less fungi. These tiny fungi must find free-living alga to become lichens again. To allow both the fungus and the algae to disperse together, lichens also produce asexual propagules, usually at the branch tips, of various kinds (e.g. soredia, isidia, pycnidia etc.). These tiny clusters of cells, once dispersed, often by wind, will grow into a new lichen.

A few of the most common lichens in southern Manitoba are described below:

More lichen information can be found in this nifty little booklet available on-line (https://www.muskokawatershed.org/wp-content/uploads/LichenID.pdf) but if you are really serious about lichens I recommend investing in Irwin Brodo’s Lichens of North America.

When the Museum opens to the public again, our visitors will be in for a pleasant surprise. The very first of our nine galleries, now called the Welcome Gallery, has been completely renovated. The much-loved Bison diorama is still there, but the exhibits surrounding it are all different. Originally built in the 1970’s, this gallery definitely had a dated vibe to it that needed to change. Further, it was no longer doing its job as an effective introduction to the province of Manitoba or to the Museum’s galleries.

The role that First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples played in the settling and formation of the province of Manitoba is now described in several places in the renovated gallery, including a beautiful new exhibit on treaties. This exhibit was created in cooperation with the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, and features the medals, pipes and pipe bags associated with these agreements. It demonstrates the fact that the Museum is committed to working with Indigenous peoples to accurately tell the history of Manitoba.

Another prominent component of the gallery is a new wall projection depicting 18,000 years of Manitoba history in two minutes! The Museum’s seven Curators all worked together on this video, which portrays, among other things, melting of ice age glaciers, changes in vegetational communities (i.e. biomes) over time, migration of Indigenous peoples into Manitoba, migration of settlers after confederation with Canada in 1870, and predicted future temperatures due to climate change.

Curators pulled out many candidate specimens and artifacts when deciding what to put in the new gallery introduction case.

As a scientist, I was disheartened that the old Orientation Gallery did not highlight the fact that this Museum has scientific collections and does research. The new Welcome Gallery does a better job of explaining this, allowing us to display and depict some of Manitoba’s fascinating wildlife. In particular, the new Discovery Room exhibit, The Museum’s Collection Illuminated: Celebrating 50 Years, highlights specimens and artifacts collected by, or donated to, the Museum. A slide show gives visitors a peak into the lives of the Curators and Collections staff that brought this new gallery to life.

This giant puffball fungus, donated to the Museum many years ago, is now on display in the Discovery Room.

One of the most impressive plant specimens at the Manitoba Museum is a huge, preserved grass that shows the entire root system. I think the reason everybody likes this specimen is that it provides a perspective that no one ever has: what a plant actually looks like under the ground. There was just one problem with that grass: it’s not actually a native species. It’s a Eurasian species called Crested Wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum) that was brought to Canada and widely planted in the 1930’s. During our planning for the new Prairies Gallery, the Curators strongly felt that visitors needed to see native species of plants when first entering the gallery. The process to collect plants for this exhibit was previously described in “I once caught a plant that was this big”.

In addition to the tap-rooted White Prairie-clover (Dalea candida), the display case includes a specimen of Manitoba’s Provincial grass, Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardi) and a June Grass (Koeleria macrantha). White Prairie-clover relies heavily on associated microbial organisms to obtain adequate nutrition; mycorrhizal fungi help it obtain water and minerals like phosphorus, while nitrogen-fixing bacteria help it obtain nitrogen. This means that the roots of prairie-clover do not have to be very extensive, as they mainly serve as attachment points for its associated organisms. Big Bluestem is a warm season grass that flowers in late summer when the soil is relatively dry; this is why its root system is so extensive and deep. In contrast, the June Grass is a cool-season species that flowers in June when the soil is still fairly moist; the shallow, densely hairy roots are able to obtain all the resources the plant needs. Thus, this exhibit nicely illustrates the main strategies that plants use to exploit different niches in the soil both in space and time.

I recently read that, thanks to Covid-19, there’s been a run on Christmas trees because so many people are staying home for the holidays this year. In a world that suffers from plant blindness (i.e. an inability to see the trees for the forest), “Christmas trees”, are among the most well-known “species” of plant. Except that “Christmas tree” is not actually A species; it is ANY kind of coniferous (i.e. cone-bearing), evergreen tree that we decorate. So, if you don’t know much about conifers, here are 10 fun facts about these common trees many of us share our homes with once a year.

Manitoba’s conifers are not like people: they don’t have different genders. Conifers produce both male cones, which produce sperm, and female cones, which produce eggs. The male cones are typically produced on the lower branches and the female cones on the top ones. This positioning helps to prevent self-fertilization because the sperm-containing pollen won’t fall on the trees’ own female cones.

The seeds of most conifers have a thin “wing” attached to them. These wings help the seeds, which are near the top of the tree, glide some distance away, so that the baby trees do not have to grow in the shade of their parent. Juniper (Juniperus spp.) and yew (Taxus spp.) seeds are contained in fleshy cones (incorrectly called “berries”), which are eaten by birds. Thus, they can also fly, although they will be in the stomach of a bird when they do. Fortunately, the seeds are usually not digested, just the fleshy part. They are usually excreted intact in the birds’ dung.

Unless you have a bidet, don’t use any paper products at all, and live in a house made entirely of straw, you have conifers in your house all the time. Paper products like toilet and wall paper, paper towel, newsprint, cardboard and printing paper are all made, at least in part, with “softwood” trees, which are conifers. As well, much of the timber we use to build our houses and furniture comes from conifer trees like pine and spruce. If you eat pesto sauce or drink gin, you are also consuming conifers. Pesto sauce is typically made with pine nuts, and gin is usually flavoured with juniper cones.

Conifers are the oldest seed plants; they evolved about 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous Period. Unlike the earliest land plants, which still needed water to reproduce, conifers did not: their sperm became contained in pollen grains, which could be transported to other plants by the wind instead of water. This enabled conifers to live in relatively dry areas. They became the dominant plants during the “Age of Dinosaurs”: the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. So, any plant-eating dinosaurs would probably have eaten conifers. Fortunately, dinosaurs are extinct so they will not eat your Christmas tree.

Wanting more conifer trivia? Check out this post from the past to learn why people drank conifer “beer”: click here to read.

Enjoy a tree-filled holiday!

Soil is sometimes called “dirt”, as if it is something completely devoid of value. But without healthy soil, there would be no food, and without food, humans are doomed. We owe this thin layer of life, a respect far exceeding what we typically show it.

Soil consists, not just of sand, silt and clay, but organic matter from plants, fungi and animals, as well as a diverse community of soil organisms, living in complex communities that we barely understand. Soil organisms play a crucial role in the persistence of life as we know it, and they are unfathomably abundant: there are more microorganisms in a teaspoon of soil than there are humans on earth. Most importantly, soil organisms help decompose dead organic matter, so that the nutrients in them can be used by living creatures. If this recycling did not happen, all life on land would eventually screech to a halt.

Most people are familiar with above-ground food pyramids: producers (e.g. grass) are eaten by herbivores (e.g. bison), which in turn are eaten by predators (e.g. wolves). What many don’t know is that this same structure also occurs in underground ecosystems. Life in the soil is kind of like the upside-down in the TV show Stranger Things; the same but different, and much darker.

Thanks to Hugues Massicotte (University of Northern British Columbia) for the images of mycorrhiza, and Raf Otfinowski and Victory Coffey (University of Winnipeg) for the nematode image.

Closed Gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) was always a puzzle to me. When I first saw a picture of it in a field guide, I assumed that the photographer had simply taken the picture before the petals fully opened up. It was many years before I finally figured out what this plant’s deal was.

Back in 2004, while doing field work out at the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, I had to walk past a few Closed Gentian plants to get to my research plots where I was studying pollinators. Every day I would think to myself, “when are those flowers finally going to open up?” Then one day as I walked past one, the whole plant vibrated. I paused, waiting to see what was going on. Suddenly, one of the fattest bumblebees I’ve ever seen pushed its way out of the flower and flew to another one, pausing briefly to nibble a small hole in the tip before pushing her way in. The proverbial light bulb went off in my head: the closed petals was this gentian’s way of preventing small insects that may be less-effective pollinators, from getting its precious nectar and pollen. Brilliant! I even came across a great video showing this behavior: