The Botany of Valentine's Day: If people reproduced like plants

If people were like plants, in-vitro fertilization would be the norm. Most plants rely on a third party, such as an insect or bird, to help them reproduce. The animal removes pollen from the stamens of one flower and transfers it to the pistil of another flower. Humans also sometimes fill this role, hand pollinating crop plants like vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) when insect pollinators are not available.

If you couldn’t find a mate and really wanted to have a baby, you could just fertilize yourself! The baby would be a clone that is genetically identical to the mother. Many plants can fertilize themselves in case they are not visited by pollinators. Self-fertilization isn’t ideal as inbreeding can produce individuals that are less healthy but at least all the effort spent producing eggs and pollen is not completely wasted.

Image: This bumblebee (Bombus) is fertilizing a breadroot (Pediomelum esculentum) plant. The bee gets paid with a delicious drink of nectar.

If people were like plants everyone would have several thousand children every year. Unfortunately, about half of them would be eaten by lions; seed predation is high in plants with 40-50% losses to birds, rodents, and insects being common. The seeds that do survive might spend decades living in a vegetative state before resuming a normal life and reproducing; this is sort of like having teenager who does nothing but play video games all day. The oldest seed ever successfully grown was a Judean date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) that was about 2,000 years old. Talk about a failure to launch!

So when you’re purchasing or appreciating your Valentine’s Day flowers this year remember that at the very least, the plant has gotten lucky!

Why did people think Manitoba and Saskatchewan so unsuitable for farming?

Peoples’ impressions of the prairie were largely based on a report by Captain John Palliser who travelled through the southern prairies from 1857 to 1860. Palliser described an area in southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta as being a desert but he did have some good reasons to call it that. Palliser travelled through the area during a severe drought. His route took him through several large active sand dune complexes. Migratory Bison were still grazing the area and keeping the grasses short. To top it all off he encountered several large grass fires in the area. So the mixed grass prairies would have looked fairly desert-like at the time.

Image: Captain John Palliser travelled through dry, desert-like areas in western Canada during a drought.

What was his conclusion as to how fertile the land was and it’s suitability for agriculture?

Most Canadians were accustomed to farming under wetter conditions or using irrigation, as most were originally from wetter areas in Europe like England, Scotland, and France. They didn’t have much experience with dryland farming so they considered the prairies too dry for agriculture. Macoun recognized that adequate soil moisture is usually present in the spring when wheat needs it the most so he thought that cultivation of this crop was possible. Unfortunately, he underestimated the frequency and severity of droughts and during the dirty 1930s much of the farmland in the driest areas of the prairies was abandoned.

Did the government act on his report?

They sure did! Politicians were very eager for settlement to occur in the southern prairies as they were concerned about American expansion into Canada. They also wanted the wealth that would be created if farmers were to grow crops for export. So the Canadian Government launched an advertising campaign to encourage mostly European immigrants to settle the prairies.

Image: The Canadian Government tried to lure European settlers to the prairies with posters such as this one.

Not much later she was preparing yet another Waxwing with a broken beak. This one had lots of ground up orange-coloured flesh inside the crop. The colour of the fruit made me think about an incident that happened long ago. One winter day I came across a huge flock of Waxwings gently pipping in a tree. I paused to admire them and was puzzled to hear an unusual plunking sound. I looked at the snow under the tree and saw that it was covered with orange-coloured poop from the mountain ash (Sorbus  sp.) berries the Waxwings were eating. The plunking sound was that of bird poop landing in the snow. Furthermore, I was standing directly in the line of fire! Admiration quickly turned to panic and I dashed out of target range. A quick examination of dried mountain ash berries in our collection helped me confirm my educated guess.

Image: Mountain ash (Sorbus sp.) tree with green fruits. The fruits turn bright orange when ripe.

The life cycle of mosses is quite different from that of flowering plants and people. If humans reproduced like mosses, our babies would grow out of our heads! Flowers and people normally have two sets of gene-containing chromosomes. Within our sex organs, cells with only half of these chromosomes are produced, namely eggs and sperm. This occurs so that when an egg and sperm unite, there will be just two sets of chromosomes (not four), one from each parent. But in mosses things work a little bit differently.

Mosses are like the amphibians of the plant world: they still need water to reproduce. The main part of the moss, the leafy green part, has only one set of chromosomes. During a wet time of the year, often spring, these plants produce eggs and sperm by straight cell division at the tips of their stems. The sperm are released and have to swim through water to reach the eggs. Once a sperm reaches an egg and fertilizes it, a tiny structure starts to grow from the tip of stem: a sporophyte with two sets of chromosomes. The sporophyte eventually produces spores with only one set of chromosomes. Once released, the tiny spores germinate and go on to produce the little plants we all know so well. Finished with its job of making babies and unable to photosynthesize, the sporophyte simply withers and falls off.

Image: It’s not dead! It’s just resting! Dried up mosses, like the ones on this rock, cease to be biologically active during hot, dry periods.

1. Marijuana and hemp are the same species.

Technically both these plants belong to the same species: Cannabis sativa.  However, industrial hemp is a cultivar that has been bred to produce good fibre while marijuana has been bred to maximize its tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content. Hemp has little to no THC in it.

2. Cannabis sativa  means “cultivated fragrant cane”.

Cannabis sativa  is the scientific name of the plant. All species have a genus (Cannabis ) and a species epithet (sativa ). The name is derived from the ancient Greek word for the plant (kannabis ) which means “fragrant cane”. The term “sativa” means “cultivated” in Latin.

Image: A display drawer in the Parklands/Mixedwoods Gallery shows rope made from natural fibers like wood nettle (Laportea canadensis) and hemp dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum).

5. It was legal to grow Cannabis  during World War II.

In 1938 growing any Cannabis sativa (even hemp) in Canada was outlawed. During World War II the ban on hemp was lifted because the fibre was needed for the war effort as Japan controlled much of the land where hemp was being grown. The commercial growth of industrial hemp in Canada finally became legal again in 1998, although a licence is required for any farmer who wishes to do so. In 2015 the sale of hemp for its fibre, oil and seeds are projected to make Canadian farmers $45-$85 million.

6. Beer contains a close relative of Cannabis.

Hops or Humulus lupulus is in the same plant family as Cannabis : the Cannabaceae. Hops, which any beer aficionado knows, are the crucial ingredient to a good beer. The flowers of hop plants are covered with fragrant resin just as Cannabis flowers are. These flowers impart a bitter flavour to beers, as well as helping to preserve the brew.

Image: Hops (Humulus lupulus), a key ingredient in beer, grows wild in Manitoba. TMM B-4621.

After whetting his appetite for botanizing in Newfoundland and Labrador, Banks manipulated his way onto the Endeavour, a ship captained by none other than James Cook. During this voyage Banks collected plants from South America, Australia, and New Zealand, contracted malaria, nearly died from exposure and lost four companions. While planning a second journey to search for Antarctica, Banks insisted on bringing 15 companions with him including two horn players (cause everyone knows you just can’t botanize without horn players following you around). To accommodate them, he had a second deck built on the ship Resolution, which made it too top heavy to be seaworthy. Captain Cook was not amused and had it torn down. When Banks saw that his new deck was gone, he had an “epic” tantrum worthy of a spoiled two year old and refused to sail, going on a trip to Iceland instead!

Image: Image of Sir Joseph Banks. V0000331 Sir Joseph Banks. Line engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Sir Joseph Banks.

This irascible Scot was a true botanical nutcase. The son of a stonemason, Mr. Douglas became friends with renowned botanist William Hooker, who sent him on a plant collecting trip to the United States in 1823. Instead of bringing food, Douglas had his horse carry 100 pounds of paper to press plants in instead. This turned out to be a bad idea; he was reduced to eating all the berries, roots, and seeds he had collected on several occasions and was twice “obliged to eat up his horse” so that he wouldn’t starve to death. He nearly died from hypothermia, infections, falling into a gully, being attacked by grizzly bears, and the list goes on. The magnificent and enormous Douglas-fir trees (Pseudotsuga menziesii) of the west coast were named after him. He fell into a pit and was gored to death by the bull that was inside it at the age of 35.

Image: Cones of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) from the Museum’s collection. a species named after David Douglas. TMM B-C-3.

This hearty Czech botanist was obsessed with collecting orchids, discovering 8oo new species from the Americas. He was so obsessed with orchids that he once climbed a 5,000-m high mountain in Peru looking for new species, despite the fact that he had only one arm (the other was a prosthetic with an iron hook on the tip). To thwart competing orchid hunters, Roezl would either collect or destroy the rarest species he found, to the chagrin of conservationists everywhere. He was robbed by bandits 17 times but fortunately never lost much because the only things he carried were plants. Disappointed at the prospect of no money, one group of exasperated thieves was inclined to cut his throat. They spared him because he was clearly crazy (why would a one armed man wander around the countryside collecting weeds?), and believed that it was bad luck to kill a crazy person.

Image: Obsessed orchid hunter Benedict Roezl discovered this orchid, Miltoniopsis roezlii which was subsequently named after him. Image from plate 6085 in Curtis’s Bot. Magazine (Orchidaceae), vol. 100, (1874).

Offered the chance to explore the wild west of Canada during a railroad route reconnaissance, Mr. Macoun jumped at the chance, despite the fact that he didn’t know how to swim, canoe, snowshoe, drive a dog sleigh, or even ride a horse very well. He left a pregnant wife and four children behind during his first trip from Ottawa to Victoria in 1872. His journeys to collect the west’s flora occasionally met with disaster. He nearly drowned, was almost crushed by two falling trees, and accidentally shot off his thumb. During one journey, too weak from lack of food to row his canoe upstream, he tied a rope around his waist so he could pull it while stumbling along the shore instead. He collapsed from exhaustion close enough to his destination that he was rescued by local First Nations people. Despite these hardships Macoun collected an astounding 100,000 plant specimens in his lifetime.

Image: Macoun’s Gentian (Gentianopsis macounii) was named after the obsessive Irish-Canadian plant collector John Macoun. TMM B-38914.

Schultes was obsessed with plants in a slightly different way than the others; he studied the medicinal and hallucinogenic ones. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on peyote and his Ph.D. on magic mushrooms. Not one to take someone’s word on the effects of hallucinogenic plants, he tried many himself, one time passing out for three days. He also took up the indigenous habit of chewing coca leaves to stay alert while travelling in the rainforests of South America. Once, he accidentally set fire to his collection while desperately trying to dry his plants in the jungle, nearly burning down his hosts’ house in the process. Schultes almost died from malaria, the nutritional disorder beriberi, and nearly drowned while doing field work. One night five vampire bats sat on his head and drank his blood. A grateful entomologist he once travelled with named a cockroach genus after him (Shultesia). He collected over 24,000 plants including 300 new to science and is considered the father of ethnobotany.

Image: Dr. Richard Evan Schultes in the Amazon. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.