Intermiadiate Winter Blog 2: Poetry In Motion!

I am certain that all of you have seen  a nature special on TV or elsewhere that shows views of all the stuff in the natural world in a way that surpasses how we may encounter our daily experience of even the most common things! Just sitting in our living rooms (or anywhere else for that matter with all the electronic gagets that are available to link to just about everything else) we can see nature in a way that surpasses our 5 senses! Well, good for you...I guess! How about finding something that you can experience with your own senses without special photography or a laboratory?

I would like to brag about being a gardener. Koudos to ALL gardeners...you still havn't yet been absorbed into the electronic ether! I would also like to brag about having a garden with birds and frogs singing their hearts out each day! It really helps drown out the nasty, constant barking of my neighbors' big dogs...the same dogs which killed one of our dogs and almost killed our little Sophie!

What I am about to show you seems to be a seemingly insignificant fragment of the natural world unless you take the time to stop, observe, and assimilate it as a personal real-time experience!

Plants have perfected the art of seed dispersion and developement of the embryo. Some utilize the wind, as with the common dandelion, or water, as with water lily and water hawthorn seeds that have special coatings to carry them across the surface before the coating disintegrates dropping the seeds to the pond bottom often many feet away from the mother plant. Others attach themselves to animals. A huge number of plants surround their seeds with a covering or fruit that may appeal to certain animals that eat the fruit. Sometimes the fruit is small as with berrieswhere the animals ingest the whole fruit. Such fruit is not only distributed but the seeds may receive special conditioning enabling them to germinate by passing through the gullet of a bird or animal. Some plants produce seed that will not germinate for many, many years until there are fires that clear out huge amounts of plant litter. These fire-exposed seeds germinate in abundance in a renewed environment that allows them to establish themselves anew, providing a new generation of plants that may not be replaced for many years to come!

Before I entertain you with one plant's strategy for survival that involves a sophisticated structure that is surprisingly simple in its execution I want to remind you of at least one plant that just about everybody in the southwest is familiar with...the pestilent and annoying weed Yellow oxalis, or yellow wood sorrel. This seemingly diminutive plant that never exceeds a few inches in height is equipped with a grenade in each small seed pod! Often mistaken for clover this plant has small parasels of four leaflets instead of the clover's three leaflets. The pale yellow flowers on short stalks (pedicels) have 5 petals. These soon develope into elongated five-sided pods. When these pods ripen and begin to dry there is a very carefully developed trigger-like tension of fibers that maintains the integrety of the pod. When dryness reaches a certain point or something lightly touches it, the pod explodes with terrific force! Seeds are flung in all directions. Seeds have been measured to be shot as far as 6 feet away! This is a little pod less than 1/2" in length and about 1/8" in diameter! I always wondered how this weed could get into pots about 2 feet tall from on the ground! Much worse the seeds that shoot out of the 2' high pots all over the garden below!!! There are many bulb or corm forming oxalis species that are not as troublesome. Many are quite attractive for short periods with the winter rains, going dormant in summer.
Another plant that shoots seed that can actually hurt is the Ruellia brittoniana (Mexican petunia) A shrubby perennial with willow-like leaves and purple or pink "petunia" flowers. The seed pod on this plant is even smaller than the very much smaller oxalis. The pod is made up of very tough plant fibers. When it dries it is like setting the trigger on a mouse trap! Take a spray bottle of water set for a moderately fine spray. Make sure you are wearing safety glasses or cover your eyes. Begin spraying water over the plant in various places. In a matter of seconds you will hear something that sounds like popcorn. If your arms or other parts of your body are not covered you will soon feel sharp stings like someone hitting you with a pea-shooter!
I recommend this plant only for low-water gardens. It can be quite invasive in moist areas. There are some dwarf selections that may not seed at all in white, pink, and reddish-purple known as the "Katie" hybrids much more suitable to the average garden.

What you are looking at is a small seed, actually much larger a seed than is usually encountered in this genus of grass (Nasella or Stipa). It provides a good subject in this short garden story. The species here is Nasella comata, found in SW US at higher elevations. This genus of grasses is often referred to as needle grass. Nasella comata is often called Needle and Thread grass...but just looking at the pic must have made you think this already! I guess I am a perfectionist for details...The actual seed is about 5/8" long just below midway and to right. It has a very, very sharp point on one end that actually is not unlike some cactus needles in that it has small barbs that prevent it from being withdrawn easily...this actually helps to complete the story as you will see later. All of the rest of what you see is called an "awn". The awn of this particular seed is about six inches in length. How I measured this is part of the story! The awn is a miraculous adaptation that with the sharp-pointed barbed seed can perform feats of physics, particularly in hydrolics, that puts many of our machines to shame with its simple efficiency!

So what is the big deal about having an awn? Not only is it a big deal but has been the key to the survival of many grasses. To draw a kind of comparison...think of the common dandelion or other weeds or even trees that release seeds with fluffy white "parachutes" that carry the seeds far away from the mother plant. These are mere attachments to the seeds that release them when they bump into another object or on the ground. The awn is similar in being an extension of the external part of a seed but helps by "planting" the seed in the ground rather than carrying it on the wind.

If  you look closely at both pics you will see that there are "corkscrew" twists in the awn. Also the sharp angle in the awn as well as the gentle arch of the feathery "tail" of the awn are very functional.

When you are cooking what is one of the most important ingrediants that gets added to just about everything? If you said "water" you get a gold star or a big hug! If you said "salt" then somebody is going to have to hit you over the head with a pillow!

Now my little demonstation begins with the above seed with it's awn attachment. I warm up some water and I dip the seed and awn completely into the water a couple of times. Then I watch.

Think of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001 Space Odyssey". Let your ears hear the "Waltz of the Flowers" as you are viewing the approach of a shuttle from Earth to the revolving space station. Think of that most delicate curve of a ballerina's body extending up into her arm arched overhead and into the graceful point of her fingers as she pirouettes in ultra slow motion!

Slowly with utmost perfection the gracefully arched awn moves slower than the second hand of a clock...but with incredible steadiness. No jerking or "stuttering"! If you were looking at the seed from the pointed end what you would be witnessing is this slow clock-wise motion. I didn't time it but might have been about one revolution per 2 or more minutes. I did time the over-all process of the awn "untwisting" itself. It took between 10 and 15 min. for the faster revolutions. Then slowed considerably to take a total of about an hour before the awn was totally untwisted and perfectly straight. It is hard to describe the motion except that even though it was purely mechanical it was more perfect than anything man-made that I can think of. One note for later discussion is that there was a time when the twists in the awn were slightly counter clockwise. This caused the awn to stop rotating and briefly nudge in a counter clockwise fashion a couple of times.

In this pic it has been about 45 or 50 min. If you look closely you can still see the below what used to be a nearly 90 degree angle there are a couple of  twists still remaining in the forward part. After more than an hour, the awn was perfectly straight.  I barely touched the seed and it fell off!

Now, what does this all mean if you are a seed with a twisty tail? When I was a flower I released some of my pollen to the wind. Pollen from other flowers like me covered me just right so I could become a seed! As I developed my very long straight "tail" (awn) gradually began to dry. As my tail dried it twisted and turned. Soon when I was ripe my tail turned some more causing me to fall to the ground. There I lay in the hot, dry sun for the longest time. Then there was a storm...water splashed everywhere about me for a while but then it was gone. Now my "tail" twisted and I began to go round and round so I didn't know what was up or down! Suddenly the twisting stopped! The sharp pointy head caught in a tiny space in the soil! I could feel my tail slowly turning and turning and occaisionally a little nudge and I went deeper. Then after a while all was still again. My tail stopped turning! I waited a long time and then suddenly there was another storm...only this time it was longer! Water splashed everywhere and splashed some more until the soil was very wet. Now my "tail"began twisting again. Mostly it just twisted and twisted but sometimes my sharp pointy head went a little deeper into the soil. Now that the rains made the soil stay moist all the movements in my "tail" stopped. In fact one day I realised that I didn't have a "tail" at all! For what seemed like a long time I lay in the dark, moist soil. Sometimes it became warmer and I awoke briefly. Then suddenly one day I lifted my head and there was the sun above me! I stretched out and breathed in the CO2 rich air! Each day I stretched furthur and furthur until one day I stretched out my arms with flowers of my own!

So let us take a brief look at this process as a significant mastery of the laws of physics as we know it! Keep in mind that this machine, if you will, was invented tens of thousands of years before man even looked upon himself! First you must have the purpose- how to produce a seed that could survive a specified set of environmental considerations, yet adapt to other conditions if needed. What is the delivery system? There is little competition from many other plants because of heavy or barren soil and low rainfall where this kind of grass grows; therefor just falling is enough. However once there, the only opportunity to gain consistent moisture is some way of getting past the hardened surface. Equiped with a very sharp, hard needle-like point and reverse barbs make for a steadfast hold wherever it has penetrated. The "awn" is a machine of remarkable manufacture. It consists of a continuous column of tissue. On the lower portions of the awn are two tape-like strips of fiber opposing each other. The central or continuous column of tissue and the opposing strips of fiber hydrate and dessicate at different rates (or perhaps the outer opposing strips of fiber absorb almost nothing) this ends up in a twisting of the fibrous tissue in order to accomodate the linear, vertical shrinkage of tissue. There is kind of a bundgy cord effect which in slow motion shrinks or expands depending upon moisture. What you have is the first genuine self-propelling auger capable of drilling without anything else but adding or removing water! Many awn producing grasses live on hardened soils like clay or silt where it is difficult for other plants to survive.

Anyone who has a garden and who is it's caretaker as well will find many opportunities to witness these kinds of miracles! There is no electronic media that can communicate to you these kinds of learning experiences.

As we are forever swept up in our own technology,

basking in a false sense of security and pride...

do not ask for the bitter end after all has been lost

 and common sense ceases to ferment in the earth below our feet!

MBS

Michael/natureguy