Star-Crossed Lovers in the Summer Triangle

For the last 13 years I have spent part of my summer studying beautiful plants; plants with big displays of nice-smelling flowers. The reason I was studying them was because I was interested in learning which insects like to visit them for their nectar and pollen. However, this year I realized that for too long I have been neglecting the ugly plants; you know the ones that we step on without a care.

Some grass flowers such as this Fringed Brome (Bromus ciliatus) are actually quite attractive.  The colourful uppermost leaves (=glumes), which cover the flower parts, are purplish and covered with fine hairs.

So why am I studying them? Well, we must remember to not confuse appearance with ecological importance. Although ugly plants aren’t always particularly nice to look at, they play extremely important roles in the functioning of ecosystems. Grasses with their enormous root systems, remove tremendous quantities of carbon from the air and lock it underground in the form of soil organic matter. Unlike the carbon in trees, this soil carbon will not burn up in a wildfire. Grasses also provide livestock and wild animals with an abundant source of food. In wetland habitats, the dense roots of grasses, sedges and rushes filter the water, removing contaminants and nutrients like phosphorus, which would otherwise cause algal blooms in our lakes.

Unfortunately, some of these plants are in trouble. While searching for several historically collected grasses, Wiegand’s Wild Rye (Elymus wiegandii) and Hairy Woodland Brome (Bromus pubescens) in southern Manitoba this June, I was upset to realize that the habitats where these plants once occurred have been completely taken over by weedy Eurasian species like Smooth Brome (Bromus inermis) and Quack Grass (Elymus repens). These aggressive, invasive species have benefitted from the soil disturbances associated with human activity and have been able to spread into native grasslands and woodlands, displacing pretty much everything else. I will continue my search for these elusive species during my next field trip further north in the hopes that I will still find them somewhere in the province.

I was watching an old episode of “The Big Bang Theory” and Sheldon asked Stephanie what her favorite fruit was. Stephanie said “strawberries” to which Sheldon replied “technically NOT a fruit”. My daughter turned to me and asked “is that true” and I said “yes, sort of.” Let me explain why.

Plants have sex. The evidence of their many dalliances lands on our lawns and patio furniture in the form of pollen in the spring and later on in the year as spores, seeds, and fruits. What’s the difference between these structures? Well, pollen is like sperm in a tiny ping pong ball, a spore is like a naked baby, a seed is like a naked baby with a bottle and a fruit is like a baby with a bottle wearing clothes (or sometimes even driving a vehicle). So at this point you’re probably thinking, “Eeww, I’ve touched that stuff” but let’s cut plants some slack cause if they didn’t have sex, they’d go extinct and that would be bad for us given that we can’t photosynthesize!

Spore-producing plants, including mosses and ferns, are terrible parents: they just abandon their children to the whims of fate with nothing to eat and not a stitch on their backs! Cone-bearing plants (=gymnosperms) like spruces, pines, and junipers, are better parents as they provide their babies with something to eat. Giving their babies a source of food enables these plants to grow in drier, less fertile habitats than spore-producing plants can. However, as their babies are “naked” with no protective covering, they are vulnerable to thieves that want to steal their “bottle”: animals!

Flowering plants (=angiosperms) include most of the plants we are familiar with: grains, fruit trees and yes, strawberries! These species don’t let their children go out without a snack and a coat on. However, not all fruits are fleshy and edible as we are accustomed to think. Nuts are actually a type of fruit with a hard shell to protect the baby from hungry animals, kind of like a tank. Grasses give their babies clothing that sticks to their bodies and won’t come off. Maple trees give their kids hang gliders to help them soar away from their parent on the wind!

There are a variety of fleshy fruits as well. A berry is a multi-seeded fruit that includes some plants that we call berries, like blueberries and Saskatoon berries, but also some that we don’t think of as berries, like grapes and tomatoes. Raspberries and blackberries on the other hand, are not true berries, they are aggregate fruits: basically a bunch of tiny fruits clustered together on the enlarged tip of the flower stalk. Stone fruits have a single, hard seed (=drupe) inside; they include peaches, plums, and cherries. Citrus fruits are berries with a tough, leathery rind called a hesperidium. These fruits, according to Sheldon are “true” fruits.

Water-lilies are often confused with pond lilies (Nuphar spp.). However, pond-lilies have bright yellow flowers that smell a bit like mango and oval leaves with feather-like veins. Water-lilies have round leaves with all the veins arising from the center of the leaf, like the palm of your hand.

If you’re out on a boat in one of Manitoba’s many lakes this July or August and you see a water-lily, take a picture and send it to me (DRobson@ManitobaMuseum.ca) along with the location where you found it to help improve our knowledge of these species. Don’t forget to flip a leaf over and take a picture of that too!

Most of the plants in the Museums’ dioramas are real plants that have been preserved and often painted. However, in some cases the preserved plants can simply not be used. This is especially true if the diorama is set in spring (e.g. wolf diorama in the Boreal Forest Gallery) or summer (e.g. bog diorama in the Boreal Forest gallery). In such cases, we make our own plants.

The process required to create a realistic fake plant is a long and laborious one. The first step is to actually obtain a real, live plant of the species that you want to reproduce. First off, a location as close to the Museum as possible that contains the species required is identified. Then, landowner permission or government collecting permits are obtained. When the plant is at the right stage of flowering, a field trip to collect it is planned, usually first thing in the morning. An appropriately sized plant is chosen, and photographs and notes on the colour are taken. Then, the entire plant, along with a good chunk of sod, is dug out, placed in a bucket, watered to keep it from wilting too much, and driven to the Museum. This is the phase of the project that I, as the Curator, are typically involved with.

The remainder of the work is now with the Diorama Artist. She removes each part of the plant and makes molds of them. Then the molds are used to create fake leaves, stems and flowers or fruits. The fake parts must all be painted to the correct colour and then attached together using glue and wire in the correct way. It’s kind of like building a complex 3D puzzle. When the model is complete it is almost indistinguishable from a real one. I’d love to do a field trip where I would place the model in a real ecosystem and then see if anyone could actually find it. I’m pretty sure the Diorama Artist would kill me if I did that though (what if we couldn’t find it again!). Right now, several completed plant models are waiting in storage or on temporary display, for eventual installation in our new exhibits.

The mini dioramas in the Museum are even more challenging than the full scale ones because you can’t use real plants in the same way. Although real branches are used for the trees, they have to be coated with wax, carved and painted to look like a real tree in miniature. Creating leaves and branches is even more difficult. In the Duck Bay mini diorama in the Parklands Gallery, the Diorama Artist used stair-step moss (Hylocomnium) as the branches of spruce (Picea glauca) trees. Baby’s breath (Gypsophila), a non-native plant used extensively in the cut flower industry, was used to create the leaves of the deciduous trees and the shrubs along the forest floor.

The Manitoba Museum prides itself on the quality of our dioramas. Every time I look at them I see some new detail that I never saw before. The next time you come to the Museum, pay close attention to the plants in the dioramas and see if you can tell, what’s real and what’s not. You will gain a new appreciation of the talent and patience of our dedicated team of staff and volunteers.

When people come to the Museum and see our dioramas they are usually impressed with the majestic, taxidermied animals in them. But what they really ought to be impressed with are the plants. I find it amazing that the trees in the elk diorama are perpetually in the process of shedding their leaves.

To create our dioramas, real plants and fungi were identified and collected from natural areas (with permission from the landowner of course) and then pickled, glued, and preserved in various ways. This preservation process, which takes many months to do, is essential to make it look like the plants are still alive; taking short cuts would destroy the illusion that you are in a real place. There are various problems that have to be overcome to ensure that our plants look right. For one, wood has a tendency to dry out and crack when you bring it into a building. That is why we have to pickle our trees to prevent this from happening. Another thing that happens when you bring a tree into a building is that the leaves fall off, unless it is in a pot and being watered. To prevent our leaves from falling off, special glues are applied to ensure they stay attached. We also need to make sure that the “floor” of the diorama looks real. We do this by attaching pieces of real sod to Styrofoam blocks that can easily be installed, removed and repaired.

This piece of sod from the Ukrainian Rye Farm diorama in the Parklands Gallery was temporarily removed for maintenance.

But not all the parts of a plant or fungus can be dried and painted. Plants in summer scenes have to possess flowers and fruits but these structures usually look terrible when they are dried out. So what do we do in those situations? In my next blog I will describe the process used to create plants from scratch.

Image: The treeline exhibit with the old background. © Manitoba Museum

Although Christmas is considered to be a “Christian” holiday, many of the rituals we associate with it, such as kissing under mistletoe, are actually pagan in origin. European mistletoe (Viscum album) was considered to be a magical plant by Druidic priests because it mysteriously grew on the branches of trees without its roots reaching the soil. Further, it stayed green in winter, and produced its berries in November and December when other plants were going dormant. Druidic priests collected mistletoe from oak trees to hang in homes in the hopes that it would ward off evil. The custom of kissing under it might have grown from a Scandinavian myth regard Baldur, the god of peace (Foster and Johnson, 2006). The myth states that Baldur was slain by an arrow made of mistletoe but then brought back to life. To commemorate this resurrection, mistletoe was given to the goddess of love, who declared that anyone passing under it should receive a kiss so that the plant would be associated with love not death.

Manitoba has two species of mistletoe: American dwarf (Arceuthobium americanum) and dwarf mistletoe (A. pusillum). Unlike European and oak mistletoe, these species are complete parasites so they do not produce any green leaves. For this reason they are not particularly attractive, consisting mainly of yellowish-green stems with tiny flowers that mature into bluish berries. The fruits of Manitoba’s mistletoes explosively eject their seeds at speeds up to 80 km/hour, travelling up to 18 metres away from the parent plant. Since the seeds are coated in sticky mucilage, they will adhere to whatever surface they hit, potentially infecting another tree. As these species cause “witches’ brooms” on the conifer trees that they parasitize (usually spruce or pine), and eventually cause tree death, they are not looked upon fondly by foresters. Trees infected with mistletoe become deformed, and are less useful for commercial timber.

Regardless of whether you love or hate mistletoe, you have to admit that they are among the world’s most interesting and unusual plants.

Reference

Foster, S. and R.L. Johnson. 2006. Desk reference to nature’s medicine. National Geographic, Washington, D.C.