Eating Japanese Knotweed (and other daft ideas)

Image: Wikipedia

There have been a number of calls(1,2,3,4) in recent weeks and months to control the invasive plant Japanese Knotweed, at least partially, by eating it. In recent days, Kerry County Council in Ireland heard from one member who, albeit with tongue-in-cheek, urged citizens to make wine, jelly and other sweet treats from the plant.

This strikes me as a terrible idea.

The plant itself is certainly edible - the Japanese have been eating it for years. It's Japanese name, itadori, means 'well being' and it seems to have some medicinal properties. It also tastes a bit like rhubarb apparently. I wouldn't know, I haven't tried it.

I haven't tried it for the same reason I don't advise you try it. Encouraging people to harvest and transport a regulated, invasive species is the perfect recipe (if you'll pardon the pun) for its continued and accelerated spread.

Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) is, as you will have guessed, native to Japan and the neighbouring region. It was introduced to the UK in the mid-19th century and quickly spread to Ireland and other parts of the world. Introduced as an ornamental plant, it quickly became a real problem.

The plant is capable of growing at a tremendous rate - 1 metre in a month- and forms big stands 2-3 metres in height. The early shoots are spear like, similar to asparagus in appearance and the plants produce delicate white flowers in late Summer. The real problem is underground where the plant forms tough rhizomes, adapted root-like organs, which remain in the soil even during the Winter when the rest of the plant dies back.

Japanese Knotweed thrives on disturbance and it is mainly spread by fragments of rhizome, crown or stem being accidentally or deliberately moved. This leads to some real (and expensive) problems including a massive reduction in biodiversity under the alien canopy; structural damage to buildings and infrastructure; and the significant cost of its removal.

Data from 2010 suggest that the plant costs the UK £165 million a year to control. If the plant were to be eradicated in the UK by current methods it would cost £1.56 billion. For one site alone, the 2012 London Olympic site, it cost £88 million to deal with this one invasive plant. Nobody wants Japanese Knotweed on their land.

Image: Wikipedia

Imagine you go to the supermarket and buy a bunch of rhubarb. The first thing you do is chop the top and bottom off the stalks and chuck them on your compost heap. Do this with Japanese Knotweed and you end up costing yourself (and potentially your neighbours) thousands in a cleanup bill.

Harvesting Japanese Knotweed from the wild, no matter how careful you are, is also fraught with problems. The plant can easily regrow from small fragments the size of your fingernail. If we're lucky, you'll drop these fragments at the original, infested site. If not, you'll drop them on your walk back to the car or in your front garden when you unload the car.

Simply put, encouraging people to mess around with an invasive species like Japanese Knotweed is, in my view, irresponsible. It may also be illegal.

In Ireland, it is an offence to "plant, disperse or cause to disperse or otherwise cause to grow" the plant. It is also an offence if "he/she has in his/her possession for sale or for breeding/reproduction/transport....anything from which the plant can be reproduced or propagated".

In the meantime, there are chemical and physical control options and scientists in the UK are developing a biological control approach using a sap-sucking insect called Aphalara itadori. This is an old enemy of the plant, found in Japan and currently being tested in the UK to see if it will do the same job in this part of the world (and not eat anything else, by accident). The trials haven't been a total success with numbers surviving over winter too low to have much of an effect, but the tests are ongoing. Hopefully, before too long we will have a sustainable control option for this invasive plant. In the meantime, stop eating it.

The (plant) science of Christmas

Plants are fascinating. One of the most fascinating aspects of plants is the way they have become embedded in human culture and society. This is, perhaps, mostly evident at this time of year. From the Christmas Tree to Brussels Sprouts, plants are as much a part of Christmas as Santa himself.

This article originally appeared in the Irish Independent's 'Science of Christmas' magazine.

Kissing under the mistletoe

If you’re lucky, you might just get a kiss under the mistletoe this year. Viscum album is what’s known as a hemi-parasite. That means it derives nutrients and water from a host plant, whilst also photosynthesising to harness sunlight for energy. It’s a sort of middle ground between being completely parasitic and completely free-living.

Mistletoe can parasitise over 200 different tree and shrub species and can ultimately kill these plants. The plant is poisonous to humans, yet lots of animals can overcome its toxins and depend on it for food in the wild.

It’s really odd then that a poisonous parasite would be at the centre of such a romantic tradition.

The plant has featured in folklore since Greek mythology and these days is hung in homes around the world in the hope of a quick kiss. The reasons for this are unclear but certainly the Greek naturalist Pliny the Elder (23 to 79 BC) recorded the widely held belief that because the mistletoe stayed green during the winter (it’s an evergreen) and the host tree generally lost its leaves, that the mistletoe somehow contained the ‘life’ of the tree.  This connection with life and fertility meant it got caught up with the tradition of Christmas and kissing.

Holly wears the crown

The red and green colours of holly (Ilex aquifolium) have become the quintessential Christmas colour combination. Since pre-Christian times, it’s had an association with winter; when the red fruits and dark-green, foliage are at their peak.

In fact, there are about 400 species of holly around the world. Eighty of them are considered threatened in the wild. The bright red fruits are attractive to birds who eat them and deposit seed elsewhere in their droppings, often under trees. For some plants, germinating in the shade would be a problem. Not so for holly which is very shade tolerant. So much so that it is becoming a real problem in forested areas where it is not native, including the US.

Holly is dioecious, which means that it has separate male and female plants. The distinctive red berries (which are mildly toxic to humans) are produced only by female plants and only when both male and female plants are grown together.

Its attractiveness as a Christmas decoration means that in some places it is endangered. This year, Killarney National Park has had to organise special patrols to prevent people chopping down whole holly trees for the lucrative Christmas market. One of Ireland’s few native evergreen trees, it has become a victim of its own popularity.

Christmas Cactus

The mountains of Brazil might be the last place we imagine when we think about Christmas.

However, the Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera buckleyi) is native to Brazil where it lives as an epiphyte - that’s a plant that grows on another plant. It’s not a parasite (like mistletoe) because it doesn’t take nutrients from the host plant. It just thinks it’s a really nice place to hang out.

The green parts aren’t technically leaves. They are a sort of modified stem which are flattened to increase the amount of sunlight that the plant can absorb. The more sunlight it collects, the more energy it has for growing.

The flowers are interesting too as they have evolved to attract hummingbirds to transfer pollen from one flower to another in order to produce seed. They come in a range of colours , from white to red and deep purple.

While in the northern hemisphere the plant is known as the Christmas cactus and closely associated with this time of year, down in Brazil it’s often called Flor de Maio (the May flower) because of the time of year it flowers in their winter.

If you want to grow your own cactus, twist off one or two stem segments, let them dry out for a few days and then plant the ‘cut’ end, about 1cm deep in a simple potting mix. Don’t plant them too deep and have patience. They’ll take about 12 weeks to root but by next Christmas you’ll have lots of free plants to use as gifts!

Dr Eoin Lettice is a lecturer in plant science at University College Cork.

Plants are at the heart of many crucial global issues facing us today

If we were to close our eyes and imagine a world without animals, what would it look like? It’s not that difficult to imagine a planet devoid of humans or other animals.

Now try and imagine a world without plants. It’s almost impossible to conceive. Although we sometimes take them for granted, plants have made possible and shaped life on Earth while making this a truly green planet.

Plants are at the centre of many of the most crucial global issues that face us now and will face us in the century to come. How can we ensure that a growing human population has enough food to eat? How can we produce that food and, at the same time, reduce the environmental impact of crop production and agriculture generally? How can we reduce the impending threat of global warming?
Can we use plants to power our homes and cars? How do we maintain global biodiversity and use medicines produced by plants to cure diseases and promote human health? All these questions and more require us to look again at our relationship with plants and how they can ultimately be useful to our society and economy.

Looking back through time, plants have shaped the world we now live in and are ultimately responsible for creating the conditions for human life to exist on Earth in the first place. When the earliest land plants appeared on Earth about 450 million years ago, they drastically changed the Earth’s atmosphere; reducing the amount of carbon dioxide and increasing the level of oxygen. That change allowed other organisms to evolve and flourish - some of them, our evolutionary ancestors.
Green plants are nature’s solar panels that have colonised much of the planet. Through a powerful process called photosynthesis, plants are capable of harnessing the vast energy radiating from the Sun. They can then make that energy available to animals, which lack this amazing ability to gather energy from an extra-terrestrial source. The Sun is the ultimate source of all energy in our solar system but we would have no way to access that energy without plants.

Our use of plants to produce food is, perhaps, the most central element of the human connection to this green planet. Since the earliest of farmers, 10,000 years ago, humans have sought to (subconsciously at first and then, more and more, consciously) select for plant types and varieties which gave the most fruits, tastiest tubers or most stable yields. Now, we’ve got more powerful tools at our disposal for plant breeding, but the basic process is essentially the same - select the best plant from this year’s crop and grow its seed next year.

But growing plants for food is just one of the ways in which we utilise them in the modern world. The ancient Egyptians once chewed willow bark to reduce fever and headaches. Now we know that the bark of willow contains the active ingredients of aspirin. More recently, a chemical derived from daffodils has been used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and cancers have been treated with the medicine taxol, derived from the yew tree. Plants are also gaining attention as “edible vaccines”, where vaccines for diseases like HIV could be produced in a plant that might also act as a delivery vehicle.
The Irish government seem to recognise the importance of plants to Ireland’s economy. If we look at the 2012 Action Plan for Jobs, sectors highlighted for potential job creation include the “Green Economy” and “Agri-food production”.  Both of these sectors have plants at their centre. Tourism - another sector flagged for growth - also relies heavily on Ireland’s natural landscape and our native flora.

Taken together with the fisheries sector, the agri-food industry in Ireland directly employs about 150,000 people and represents about 60 per cent of manufacturing exports by Irish firms. Our success in this area is hinged on plants, whether as crops grown for direct consumption, as raw materials for other products or as animal feed for the meat and dairy sectors. In recent years our reliance on plants within the agri-food sector was emphasised by the fodder crisis. A longer than usual winter meant reduced grass growth and a need to provide an alternative food source for Ireland’s more than 6 million cattle. As the effects of climate change become more obvious on our weather patterns, this type of event may become more common.

Perhaps then, the economic and societal importance of plants only becomes truly obvious when they fail us. Ireland’s history of famine due to late blight of potato in the mid 19^th Century had profound effects on Irish population levels and social history.

As well as an economic impact, plants also have an aesthetic quality which makes them good things to have around. A number of studies have reported the mental and physical health benefits of being exposed to plants and green spaces in general. One study, from the Netherlands, looked at 10,000 people’s general health and compared it to the amount of green space in their neighbourhood. A clear trend emerged: people living in areas with more plants, on average, experienced less symptoms of ill-health and perceived their own health to be better.

In a classic study conducted in the US in the 1980s, patients in a hospital ward with a view of a natural setting, including trees and other plants, recovered more quickly from surgery and took less pain-killing medication than patients with a window view of a brick wall.

Rather than taking them for granted, the role plants play in our lives needs to be recalled. The Irish writer Jonathan Swift once wrote: “Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together”. With apologies to our local and national representative, I’d have to agree with Swift.

This is an adapted version of a piece I first wrote for The Journal.

Famine and food

The ongoing debate regarding the efficacy of genetically modified (GM) crops to increase global food security goes on, while a recent study of US consumers indicates that opinions on genetically modifies crops are not swayed by specific arguments about plant disease and famine.

At least one million people died and a further one million were forced to emigrate during the Irish potato famine of 1845-1852. Those figures are so often repeated in undergraduate plant pathology classrooms that they lose their shock value. Those years seem so distantly removed from our lives in the 21st century that we occasionally fail to recall that it happened just a handful of generations ago. The famine had such a profound impact on the social, geographic and economic landscape of Ireland that the country still bears the scars. For instance, the population of the Republic of Ireland, as measured by the 2011 census, stands at 4.6 million compared to a pre-famine population of 6.5 million in 1841. Meanwhile, there are 39.6 million Americans who claim Irish ancestry, due in part to massive emigration to the US during and immediately after the famine.

In a recently published study, American consumers were asked their opinion of GM. Half of the sample group were first asked to read a short vignette describing the causal agent of the potato famine, the fungal-like potato disease late blight. The second half of the sample was asked to read a similar vignette, though not mentioning late blight and the Irish famine specifically.

For example, the late blight-specific vignette included:
"Late blight was a key cause of the Irish Potato Famine of the 1850s that led to the starvation of millions of people in Ireland and forced many Irish to leave the country. Late blight has re-emerged in recent years as a substantial threat to crops across the United States and around the world."

Ultimately, even when the question was contextualised in relation to late blight and famine, there was no significant difference in public views about the perceived risks, benefits or fairness of GM crops. This is an interesting finding; given calls in Europe and elsewhere to increase the cultivation of GM crops, particularly in traditionally GM-sceptical nations such as the UK.
This year, for example, the Council for Science and Technology in the UK, scientific advisors to the government, called for the EU to end its “dysfunctional” regulations on GM crop cultivation saying that if the country didn’t embrace GM “the risk is people going unfed”.

Even in Ireland, where one might expect the memory of the famine to linger long with consumers, limited trials of late blight resistant potato plants in recent years have met with some resistance. These EU-funded trials, conducted by Ireland’s agricultural development agency were described as “economic suicide” by opponents who called GM an “unwanted technology”. The scientists conducting the trials, which began in 2012, were keen to stress the impartial nature of the study and that it was not about “testing the commercial viability of GM potatoes” and was specifically concerned with their environmental impact.

In fact, there is a myriad of reasons why some consumers reject GM technologies in foodstuffs. Not all of them, of course, are supported by any real science, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they are real obstacles to overcome for those who would promote a sustainable food-production system which incorporates all aspects of biotechnology, including genetic modification of crop plants. What is clear now is that simply using the approach of emphasising the crop protection benefits of GM is not enough. Consumers are, rightly or wrongly, also worried about the environmental impact of such crops and no amount of appealing to their memory of past catastrophic crop failures will appease them.

One might argue that the passing of time between the Irish potato famine and the current advances in plant biotechnology can account for the lack of relevance and impact on consumer opinion. Perhaps, informing consumers about more recent plant disease outbreaks would be more beneficial.  One could point to the Bengal famine of 1943, when an estimated 2 million people died when the rice crop was attacked by a fungal pathogen. In truth, the vast bulk of food for human consumption worldwide is provided by just fourteen crop plants. Failure of any one of these could have a significant impact on global food security. However, we are in a very dark place indeed if we must look for a catastrophic crop failure to remind consumers of the value of plant biotechnology in protecting our food supply.

Eye to the Ground

Friday 20th September is Culture Night in Ireland and all around the country, people will get to see behind closed doors, hear beautiful music, see fantastic art or visit a museum out of hours. 

In conjunction with Cork Skeptics, I'll be giving a talk on culture night on the importance of plants to society and culture. The talk is entitled: Eye to the Ground: Plants in Culture, Myth and Society.

As we know, humans exist because plants exist. Plants have shaped our world, allowing animal life to evolve and they continue to have an overriding influence on our society. From the food we eat, the medicines we take, the beer we drink and the clothes we wear; plants make life possible on Earth.

Indeed, Ireland has built two of its largest industries - agriculture and tourism - on its green image

In this talk, I will examine the importance of plants in society and even unearth some intriguing mysteries which can be solved with a knowledge of plants. What caused the Salem witch trials? Why are the British a nation of tea-drinkers and what caused the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’?

I’ll discuss the present place of plants in culture and society and discuss the idea of ‘plant blindness’ - the inability to see or notice plants (and their importance) around us.

Given the crucial importance of plants to critical global problems like food security and climate change, we ignore plant blindness at our peril.

This talk is free to attend and open to everyone. It starts at 7pm on Friday 20th September, 2013 and takes place at the Lee Rowing Club on The Marina in Cork City, near Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Note: this is a change from the usual Cork Skeptics venue.

For more details and a map to the venue, see the Culture Night Cork website.

Growing Awareness

Last weekend saw the final event in the hugely successful Taste of West Cork festival in Skibbereen.

A huge festival market ended the festival's 10th season which has been one of the most well attended yet.

I was in Skibbereen the weekend before to take part in some of the first events of this year's season. Having talked specifically on the potato last year, I was asked back to give a broader talk on the importance of plants as sources of food and their central place in human society.

"Harvesting the Sun: How plants make food" was well attended and I thoroughly enjoyed the very plant-orientated focus of the Growing Awareness project of which my talk was a part.

Image: Taste of West Cork

Having borrowed an old bakery premises from Field's supermarket (itself a reminder of how important plants are for our 'daily bread') the organisers set to work creating a festival box office but also a lecture space and a huge exhibition highlighting the importance of plants for food.

The Growing Awareness exhibition was the result of many hours hard work by so many organisations and individuals. It was great to see my own students from the UCC MSc Organic Horticulture class, based nearby, making a contribution. The result was an accessible, vibrant and interesting exhibition on plants that will contribute to people's awareness of how important plants are to society. The organisers are to be commended for their foresight and hard work.

Is "gardening" killing plant science?

Gardening Gnome by pareerica (Creative Commons)

James Wong - the ethnobotanist, author and BBC science presenter- came in for some criticism in recent days for being over-excited about gardening.

The writer Helen Gazeley wrote in her blog:

"Gardening isn't exciting. Gardening is the epitome of delayed gratification. We wait; we nurture. People who need excitement in the quantities that gardening marketing departments would like to serve up go sky-diving, bungie-jumping, or throw all their savings into a once-in-lifetime venture. Those of us who garden find it has exciting moments, but we do not do it for excitement."

Fair comment, I suppose, but Wong was not about to take the criticism lying down and tweeted:

Shame that finding gardening 'fun' & 'exciting' is considered cynical, infantilised & trite. Unsurprising hort is in crisis when..... (1/2)
— James Wong (@Botanygeek) July 4, 2013

the dominant model is so straight jacketed that it has a monopoly on not only how I grow, but even how I should FEEL when doing it. (2/2)
— James Wong (@Botanygeek) July 4, 2013

So, are plants exciting? Is gardening exciting? Should we strive to make the study and use of plants exciting for a younger audience?

I'm a plant scientist. I'm not really a gardener. The sum total of my personal gardening efforts (i.e. growing plants at home, for non-research purposes) are a few tomatoes, some sunflowers and a small pot of herbs outside the kitchen window. So, credentials out of the way, I'm proposing a question: Is "gardening" killing plant science?

In Ireland, we still have a very strong network of plant science researchers and teachers along with a good selection of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in plant science/botany/plant biology, etc., along with horticulture degrees and MSc programmes. My own university runs a successful degree programme in Applied Plant Biology and a new MSc in Organic Horticulture at a newly established Centre for Organic Research in West Cork.

That being said, we still have to work hard to excite school-leavers to consider the option of studying plants rather than get swept away by the thrill of studying animals and other more "exciting" life forms.

In the UK, things are not so rosy in the garden (if you'll embrace the pun!). Plant science degrees (and even whole departments) are being closed by universities unwilling, it seems, to look at the bigger picture of a world increasingly reliant on plants and their products. Just ten universities in the UK continue to offer undergraduate degrees in plant science. The figures are shocking to anyone with even a cursory interest in issues like global warming, food security and biodiversity loss.

Although it might be unpopular to say it, could it be that school leavers are being turned off plants and the study of plant science because they associate it too closely with gardening? "Gardening" (and I use the inverted commas deliberately to denote the public perception of same) is something their grandparents do. It's something their parents do at the weekend. Are our prospective plant scientists of the future mentally scarred by having been dragged around boring garden centres every weekend of their childhood?

Perhaps gardening has an image problem. Perhaps making gardening, and also the study of plants "exciting" is just what we need.Gazeley's notion of relying on "delayed gratification" to attract people to plants clearly isn't working in the UK.

Whilst gardening is an extremely interesting, and yes, exciting pastime; "gardening" is perhaps in need of an image overhaul. While many gardeners do get excited about plants and how these amazing organisms work, there is no doubt that some are purely interested in the aesthetic quality of plants. That is not necessarily exciting to a younger audience.

The Aberystwyth-based plant ecologist Dr. John Warren, writing in 2010, sums it up nicely when he says students are often lured away from studying plants by the promise of animals which are "majestic, beautiful, cute and dynamic".

"I'm not arguing that zoologists are villainous Dr. Evils determined to destroy the Earth," writes Warren, "but that many of them are plant scientists that we have failed to inspire".

If James Wong gets excited about plants, good luck to him. We need more of that, not less. He's inspiring people.

Robert Boyle Summer School 2013

The 2nd Annual Robert Boyle Summer School will take place in beautiful Lismore, Co. Waterford from the 4th-7th of July and will feature a talk on the future of plant science.

A stimulating programme features speakers from around the world, panel discussions, a tour of Lismore Castle Gardens also a barbecue in the Castle Courtyard and a guided coach tour of West Waterford.

It will attract people with an interest in history, heritage, philosophy and science. According to a spokesperson: "It is not a science conference, but a gathering where people of all backgrounds can meet and consider the place of science in our lives".

The school celebrates the life, work and legacy of Robert Boyle who was born in Lismore Castle. Boyle was a central figure in the development of modern science and ranks alongside Galileo, Descartes and Newton whose work ushered in the modern age.

Prof. Liam Dolan

One of the highlights of the weekend will be a talk by Prof. Liam Dolan (Oxford) on advances in plant science and how we can help feed the world's ever growing population. This should be particularly topical given this week's speech by British Minister Owen Paterson in which he called for a renewed debate about GM crops in Britain.

Speaking to Communicate Science, founder of the Robert Boyle Summer School, Eoin Gill (WIT) said such an event dealing with science had been missing from the Irish calendar:

"For a long time Ireland has had summer schools celebrating many cultural figures / themes. One huge aspect of our culture that has been missing is science! The Robert Boyle Summer School now fills that gap and provides a place for scientist and non-scientists to meet and engage with science. Such an event is important for all of us concerned with public engagement with science and we need widespread support to continue".

More information on the summer school can be found at www.robertboyle.ie

Fascination of Plants Day 2013

'Plant Evolution' at JFK Arboretum, Ireland.

Today marks Fascination of Plants Day 2013 around the World. 

It's a day to get as many people as possible enthused about the importance of plants for agriculture, food production, horticulture, forestry, energy production, production of pharmaceuticals and the variety of other ways that plants impact on all our lives.

The celebration is spearheaded by the European Plant Science Organisation but, in just two years, has already spread beyond Europe and events this year will take place as far away as Australia and Zambia.

For a full list of events taking place around the World, see the Fascination of Plants website.

To mark Fascination of Plants Day, I've written a column for The Journal today on the importance of plants to our society and economy. Read it here

Are you interested in the greatest challenge on Earth?

The Director of the National Botanic Gardens, Matthew Jebb, has said that the study of plants has never been more important given the global problems we face - the greatest challenge on Earth.

"By 2050, the UN estimates the world will need 70% more food, 55% more clean water and 60% more energy than today", said Jebb. "These challenges will have to be met through the sustainable use of natural resources. The most important question facing the human race must be how will the world feed our children’s children? The answer is with advances in plant biology and ecology, and using this knowledge in field-based solutions".

A career and information day for Botany and Plant Science will take place at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin later this month.

The event, on Thursday 21st March from 2pm-5pm, is the perfect opportunity for those interested in a university degree, or career in plant sciences, to learn more.

Matthew Jebb said the event was "an unparalleled opportunity to hear first hand from botanists engaged in biodiversity, ecology, conservation and genetics jobs, and the potential prospects in one of the most important future careers for saving our planet".

Dara O’ Briain at the National Botanic Gardens for Dublin2012

Writing in advance of the information day, Jebb said that plant science had never been more important: "The growing and increasingly prosperous human population needs abundant safe and nutritious food, shelter, clothes, fibre, and renewable energy, and needs to address the problems generated by climate change, while preserving habitats. The key to solving these challenges is Plant Science; plants are the source of all the food we eat and the air we breathe".

Plant scientists, researchers and teaching staff from the Botanic Gardens and from University College Cork, University College Dublin, Trinity College, NUI Maynooth and NUI Galway will present on the day and provide information on the courses they offer.

The Botany and Plant Science Career and Information Day takes place at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin Dublin on Thursday 21st March from 2pm-5pm. More details can be found on the Gardens website.

Plant Watch: Germander Speedwell

 

This is the beautiful little Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys).

Found widely in hedgerows around Ireland, the small blue flowers have a four-lobed corolla (that's the collective term for the petals) and two stamens (the male parts of the flower).

In Germany, the flower is often referred to as "Männertreu" or "men's faithfulness" due to the fact that it wilts very quickly after picking! In English-speaking countries, it was considered a good luck charm for travellers, meant to 'speed' you on your journey.

It generally flowers from April to June, altough I found this specimen flowering at Tragumna, West Cork in late August!

Plant Watch: Portland Spurge

Here's Euphorbia portlandica, Portland Spurge. It's a relatively common, coastal plant found on sand dunes around the country, while being less common on the west coast.

Tending to grow low across a dunes, the red stems are a diagnostic feature.

It's a species in the genus Euphorbia, which contains 1603 species and  belongs to the Euphorbiaceae family. The plants bloom from June to August (this photo was taken in late August at Cullenstown, Co. Wexford).

The flowers are aranged as cymes - a more or less flat-topped flower-cluster. Don't confuse it with sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias) which is taller, with larger, less yellow flowers. The bracts of Portland Spurge (those modified leaves associated with the flower) are "ace of spades" shape with a tiny point at the end.

Keeping the blooms alive

Ever the romantic, I bought my beloved a clump of dying plant tissue to put in a vase on the kitchen window. Of course I didn't put it quite like that when I brought them home but it's good to remember what you are buying when you pick up a bunch of flowers.

From the moment they are cut to the time when they end up in your wheelie bin, it's a battle against the inevitable to keep cut flowers alive and Spanish scientists have now shown that sugar and the plant hormones in the flowers themselves are key to keeping them looking their best long enough for your partner to forgive you for whatever you've done to offend.

A flower is a thing of beauty to be enjoyed but from a biological point of view it has a definitive job to do. The huge diversity in flower anatomy, colour and scent is largely related to pollination. Plants have evolved flowers to attract insects, birds and other animals to disperse pollen and fertilise the female reproductive organs.

From the colossal flowers of Rafflesia arnoldii - the largest flowers in the world at up to a metre in diameter, to the minute blooms of Wolffia species - the smallest in the world, the simple goal is the same.

Once fertilisation has occurred, the plant has no need for such gaudy displays and the petals are usually the first parts of the flower to show signs of decay once their job is done.

To counteract the short vase-life of flowers, a packet of 'flower food' is often included when you visit the florist. These products usually contain some sugar to act as an energy source; a compound to alter the acidity of the water to make it more suitable for the flowers; and a disinfectant to kill off any bacteria which could speed up decay in the vase.

Now researchers using lilies (Lilium longiflorum) have shown that adding sugar to the vase speeds up the opening of the flower and slows down its decay but doesn't affect the rate at which the petals drop off the flower - a sure sign your peace offering should have been binned already. The overall effect of these changes is a longer flowering window and a happy customer.

Laia Arrom and Sergi Munné-Bosch found that adding sucrose to the vase accelerated flower opening by 2.4 days and delayed its decay by 24 hours. Their work was published in the journal Plant Science earlier this year.

Further analysis of how the tissues of the flower use this sucrose showed that the petals and the male parts of the flower took up lots of the sugar and used it quickly. The female parts of the flower, on the other hand, took up sucrose and held on to it - a reserve, perhaps, for the female element's new role as a seed-bearer.

So, how did adding simple sugar to the distilled water in the vase increase the length of time the flowers kept their condition? Crucially, the addition of sucrose to the vase seemed to alter the balance of hormones in the flower tissues.

Hormones serve much the same function in plants as they do in animals - acting as chemical signals which can be transmitted over long distances.

It was already known that a particular group of plant hormones called cytokinins can delay the onset of floral decay and, sure enough, this recent study showed that a cytokinin called zeatin riboside was accumulated in the flowers, prolonging their vase-life.

Another plant hormone, abscicic acid, is known to speed-up the decay of petals and the researchers found that flowers treated with sucrose had 57% less absicsic acid compared to control flowers.

The cut flower industry is big business. A recent report (pdf) on the industry described it as being worth over US$100 billion a year worldwide. The UK share alone is worth around £2.2 billion - a 250% increase over the last twenty years. That's a lot of husbands doing a lot of apologising.

Whatever we're buying them for, consumers like flowers that stay alive long enough to enjoy them. This latest research suggests we're doing the right thing by adding sugar. The extra energy source is able to alter the balance of plant hormones enough to get an extra few days of enjoyment out of the blooms. If that doesn’t work, you may need to try a box of chocolates.

GM trial gets go-ahead

A genetically modified potato variety will be planted in Ireland as part of a Teagasc-led experimental trial, which has today got the 'green-light' from Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This post also appears on the Cork Independent Blog.

The field trials were allowed to proceed after an assessment of the experimental plans and designs by the EPA and a broad-ranging consultation process. The EPA also received 83 representations from interested parties - all objecting to the proposed trials. I've previously written about why, I think, this trial is needed.

Teagasc applied for a liscence to plant the potatoes back in January. These plants contain a gene which makes them resistant to late blight (Phytophthora infestans) - the organism which caused the Irish potato famine. This gene has been taken from a wild, related potato variety and inserted into the cultivated potato using GM technology.

The EPA have given their consent to the trials subject to eight conditions, saying in their decision: "The agency believes that the risk to human health and the environment from the deliberate release of these GM potatoes is negligible".

The conditions include a requirement of Teagasc to monitor the experimental site for at least four years after planting. They also require Teagasc to report to the EPA every two months on the progress of the experiments and to set up a 40m exclusion zone around the site where no commercial potato planting can take place.

This trial will ensure that we can have real experimental data, based on Irish conditions, so that we can sensibly assess the impact of GM potato planting on the environment under closely monitored and controlled conditions. From reading through the large number of submissions, it is clear that a large number of those objecting are calling for "more information" before such planting takes place. They seemingly fail to see that this trial is specifically design to provide that information they crave; and to do so in a safe, controlled and carefully-monitored fashion.

There will be a large amount of hyperbole written and spoken about this decision in the next few days. Already, the Organic Trust has warned of "grave ramifications" and a Green party spokesman has suggested it will do "untold damage to Irish farming". On the other hand, those welcoming the decision may talk of feeding the world and food security. In reality, the product of this decision will be far less clear-cut. We will hopefully learn more about how GM plants work in the Irish environment and those who support or oppose GM will continue to argue their own side of the debate.

I believe this is a positive step forward however. This experiment will provide real results which can only add to, enrich and enlighten what is an already heated debate. I look forward to seeing the results of this experiment.

Fascination of Plants Day

Image: Wageningen UR/Fascination of Plants Day

Today, May 18, the fascination and importance of having plants on our planet will be in the spotlight worldwide.

Launched under the umbrella of the European Plant Science Organization (EPSO, Brussels), the Fascination of Plants Day has been adopted by 39 countries, 29 from Europe and 10 from North- and South America, Asia, Australasia and Africa.

More than 580 institutions - ranging from botanical gardens to plant research centres - are hosting different kinds of public and media events which are all closely related to basic plant science, agricultural research, environmental conservation, biodiversity, education and arts.

The public as well as journalists and the media are invited to attend press conferences, to explore laboratories or to visit greenhouses, field stations or field sites, museums, and other exhibitions. People will have the opportunity to talk with plant scientists and discuss basic and applied research in plant biology.

For information on Irish Events for Fascination of Plants Day - see here

Australian organisers have been running a Youtube video competition on the theme. Here's one of the entries-

Plants on the coast

Apologies for the dearth of posts of late. To ease us back into it, here's a few images from a day spent botanising on the coast of West Cork. 

They're two very common plants found right around the coast of Britain and Ireland.

The first is Common Scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis). Found on saltmarshes and cliffs, the white flowers have four petals and the leaves are easily identifiable, being arrow-shaped around the stem. It's a member of the Brassicaceae family.

The plant gets its common  name from the fact that it was often used on ships as a cure for scurvy - caused by a lack of vitamin C.

The second plant is Thrift (Armeria maritima). Flowering now until almost the end of summer in places, the pink flowers are found in round terminal heads on tall stalks extending from a cushion of slender, single-veined leaves.

Found also in saltmarshes and (as here) on clifftops, it's also known as Sea Pink.

Interestingly, Thrift is highly tolerant of copper - able to exclude the metal, retaining it in the roots without transporting it to the rest of the plant. It also excretes the copper through its decaying leaves.

The future of agriculture

A new report has highlighted the effect a rapidly growing human population is having on the world’s economy and environment. In the wide-ranging People and the Planet report, the Royal Society says that science and technology has a crucial role to play in offsetting these effects, including in the area of agricultural production.

According to the report, published this week, the global population will have reached 9.3 billion by the year 2050. While recognising the significant yield increases that have (and will be) achieved via the genetic improvement of crop plants, the authors also called for a focus on better crop management practices: “These include integrated pest control and inter-cropping systems, in addition to capital-intensive technologies such as precision agriculture which may offer large benefits in countries already practising intensive agriculture”.

The report recognises that technology will play “an increasing role” if more food is to be grown without requiring significantly more natural ecosystems to be turned over to farmland. 

So, if yield is so important, is there a future for organic agriculture? I’d argue yes, but as part of a new system which incorporates the best features of all agricultural ideals.

The Royal Society report comes as new research further confirmed the yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture but has shown that, given the right crop and growing conditions, organic can "nearly" match conventional yields.

Organic systems provide a number of tangible benefits over conventional agriculture, despite having generally lower yields. However, given the need for some crops, particularly cereals to keep pace with rapidly growing demand, the gap between that which can be provided by organic systems and which is required by a rapidly increasing global population is growing. 

In a paper published in the journal Nature this week, US and Canadian researchers used a meta-analysis of available information to conclude that, on average, organic yields are 25% lower than those produced in conventional agriculture. 

Depending on the type of crop examined, yield gaps varied significantly. For example, organic fruit production had, on average, just 3% lower yields than conventional fruit production. On the other hand, cereal production was seriously hampered by an organic system, with a yield reduction of 26% compared to conventional cereals, i.e. those produced with chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

The researchers showed that organic systems performed better in terms of yields, without matching conventional agriculture, when high levels of organic nitrogen were present, the organic system was well established and rain-fed irrigation systems were used.

Correct soil pH and the use of best management practices also influenced the yield gap, leading the authors to conclude that the results “suggest that today’s organic systems may nearly rival conventional yields in some cases—with particular crop types, growing conditions and management practices—but often they do not."

These new results support a study published earlier this year which also demonstrated a significant yield gap between organic and conventional. Researchers in The Netherlands used a meta-analysis to show that the yield gap was, on average, 20% in favour of conventional systems. 

These data should encourage further research in organic agricultural systems. The amount of research done on organic is tiny compared to conventional crop production. It is reasonable then to assume that, while perhaps never reaching the maximum yields possible with conventional systems, the advantages of organic, including biodiversity and soil conservation benefits should encourage us to look more closely at this type of agriculture.

the key will be to move away from the hard-line ideology of an organic versus conventional debate In my view, the key will be to move away from the hard-line ideology of an organic versus conventional debate and look to examine what features of all agricultural systems could be utilised in a multi-faceted approach, using complementary ideas from each camp. The importance of creating and maintaining high levels of soil biodiversity, such a crucial component of organic agriculture needs to be recognised in any new system. Conversely, the limiting factor that low levels of nitrogen in organic systems poses needs to be overcome. 

As the authors of this new research put it, there should not be winners and losers in this debate. The result should be a combination of what is best about organic and conventional crop production:

"There are many factors to consider in balancing the benefits of organic and conventional agriculture, and there are no simple ways to determine a clear ‘winner’ for all possible farming situations. However, instead of continuing the ideologically charged ‘organic versus conventional’ debate, we should systematically evaluate the costs and benefits of different management options. In the end, to achieve sustainable food security we will probably need many different techniques—including organic, conventional, and possible ‘hybrid’ systems—to produce more food at affordable prices, ensure livelihoods for farmers, and reduce the environmental costs of agriculture."

We need a new agriculture- one which is not limited by ideology but is informed by science and which is relevant for an era of a rapidly growing human population and an ever increasing demand for food and food security.

An edited version of this article appears on the Guardian's Notes and Theories blog. You can read it here.

The plants and trees of Fota

This Bank Holiday weekend marked a much-anticipated return visit to Fota Arboretum in East Cork.

Fota Island was originally the home of the Smith-Barry family and in the ownership of that family since 1177. After the death of the last of the Smith-Barrys in 1975, the Island was sold to University College Cork. Over time, parts of the island has been put to a variety of uses including the unique Fota Wildlife Park. Although financial constraints required parts of the estate to be sold off for a golf course and hotel development, much of Fota remains in public ownership.

Fota House, former seat of the Smith-Barrys and their impressive gardens and arboretum is open to the public and is well worth a visit.

The Irish Heritage Trust took over responsibility for Fota House, Arboretum and Gardens in 2007 and there has been some noticeable improvements in signage and accessibility in that time. The Office of Public Works manage the gardens and arboretum.

Many sources describe the word Fota as coming from the Irish term 'Fód te' meaning warm soil and as such, the gardens are a great spot to relax and enjoy one of the greatest collection of rare and tender trees and shrubs growing outdoors in Ireland and Britain.

Japanese Cedar - a billowing thundercloud

The Smith-Barrys can be credited with the laying-out of the gardens and arboretum. Even up to the last of the Smith-Barrys, a Mrs. Bell, cataloguing and conserving the plant collections were important.

Japanese Cedar

One of the most impressive trees in the collection is a magnificent Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica 'Spiralis') planted in around 1880. The national tree of Japan, this variety has particularly interesting foliage where many of the needles twist themselves around the stems giving a spiral appearance. From a distance, the tree resembles a billowing thundercloud and is about 20 metres high.

There are a few small Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana) trees in the arboretum.

Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana)

Now is also a good time to visit. The Camellia and Magnolia are already in flower and Primroses abound in the wooded areas.

Magnolia 'Big Dude'

Camellia japonica 'Lavinia Maggi'

There is a magnificent Drimys winteri 'Glauca' currently in flower. Native to rain forests of Chile and Argentina, the bark of the plant known as "Winter's Bark" was a well known cure for scurvy.

Drimys winteri 'Glauca'

Drimys winteri 'Glauca'

Also at this time of the year, the azaleas which are dotted around the house are a riot of pinks, reds and purples.

For those who love plants Fota is a must visit. Understandably, the animals in the nearby wildlife park are a huge draw but, and at the risk of spoiling this oasis of calm, the gardens and arboretum deserve to be more visited in their own right.

Fota Garden and Arboretum are open year round and entry is free. There is however a €3 charge for parking. The island can also be accessed by train from Cork's Kent railway station. Charges apply for visiting Fota House and Fota Wildlife Park.

The Fota House Plant and Garden Fair takes place on Sunday 22nd April 2012 in association with Marymount Hospice New Building Fund. For more details, see www.fotahouse.com