What We Killed Thursday

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It’s been quite a few weeks since I’ve featured an extinct plant, but the series isn’t dead yet!  While I really enjoy researching and sharing what I find about extinct species, it does take more time than I had at the end of the semester.

Many of the plants I feature are extinct in the wild but have a few survivors in botanical gardens and such.  I have a couple reasons for preferring to feature plants that are only extinct in the wild rather than completely extinct.  One, I like to be able to show some sort of image of the plant – even if it’s just an herbarium specimen or a drawing – and it’s much easier to find pictures of plants that have even a few living specimens.  Showing an image of the plant makes it seem more real I think – it’s harder to ignore.  The second reason is that even if a plant is extinct in the wild, as long as we have a few living specimens, it may have a chance of rebounding if we keep propagating it, planting it, and restoring its habitat.

Encephalartos nubimontanus is a cycad species that is extinct in the wild.  It was native to the Limpopo province of South Africa where it grew on the Northern Drakensberg escarpment, often on cliff faces.

Northern Drakensberg escarpment

Northern Drakensberg escarpment

I’ve written before about cycads and I’ve probably mentioned that cycads are one of my favorite kinds of plants.  Encephalartos nubimontanus is a particularly beautiful species.

Encephalartos nubimontanus

Encephalartos nubimontanus

Nubimontanus means “black mountain,” perhaps named after the black cliff faces of the region.  By the 1980s, just one population of about 66 plants remained – by 2001 that number had declined to 8 and in 2003, none.  Many of these cycads were poached and I imagine that if you bought one today it would be the child or grandchild of one of those poached specimens.  The other important factor leading to the extinction of this species was debarking for medicinal use.  Cycads produce numerous powerful chemical compounds and are incredibly toxic.

South Africa is home to numerous cycad species and many of them are on the brink of extinction because of plant poaching.  Luckily, the South African government is working to protect their endangered cycad populations.

While the native plants and animals of the western US aren’t in as much danger from poachers, they are threatened by habitat destruction and climate change.  Under rules issued by the Bush Administration, the Bureau of Land Management may lease millions of acres of land in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming for commercial oil shale development.  Oil shale extraction, processing, and use are all very, very bad for the environment and mining laws in the West can let mining companies destroy the environment and not pay a dime. So write the BLM and tell them to set up some solar panels instead of digging up a dirty, inefficient fuel source.

Connotations

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One of the most difficult things about learning a language must be learning the hidden meanings of words.  Take, for example, unbelievable and incredible.  They both literally mean the same thing, but unbelievable is “bad” and incredible is “good.”

Panda Plant

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Panda plant

Panda Plant, Kalanchoe tomentosa, is a close relative of Mother of Thousands.  It’s called a Panda Plant because the leaves are very very fuzzy and have red tips and they supposedly resemble panda toes.  Though both pandas and Panda Plants are very cute, I do not think there is any real resemblance.

Baby panda

Baby panda

Mother of Thousands can propogate rapidly with little plantlets on the edge of their leaves.  Panda Plants can also propogate from their leaves – but they only make one plantlet per leaf and they only do it if the leaf is in contact with the soil.  It’s still pretty cool, though.  When most plants lose a leaf, the leaf dies.  When a Panda Plant loses a leaf, it clones itself.

This is how my Panda Plant got started.  Mine is a bit leggier than most because it doesn’t get enough sunshine.

 

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Mother of Thousands

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mother of thousands

Mother of Thousands

I promised to show you pictures of my plants a few weeks ago.  I’ve taken pictures of a few of them, but not all.  The weather has been so strange here and is making picture taking difficult.

This plant is a Mother of Thousands, a kind of Kalanchoe. It forms little plantlets on its leaves – you can see a few in this picture – and then drops them.  It’s incredible the number of little clones this plant makes in just a few months.

I started this mother of thousands from a plantlet about a year and a half ago.

Berry Go Round #16

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I’m usually late advertising new Berry Go Round editions, and this month is a particularly good example of that – in just over a week I’ll be hosting BGR 17.  Drop off your submission and then head over to Quiche Moraine for BGR 16.  I enjoyed the focus on mutualism in this edition – for so long ecologists focused almost soley on competitive interactions, but we’re now realizing that mutalisms are far more common than we’d ever thought.

Science and Chronic Illness

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I’ve complained about having migraines here before, but I haven’t talked much about how I expect them to affect me in the future.  Part of that is because it terrifies me.  As an undergraduate with classes that aren’t too challenging and teachers that don’t mind letting me make up tests, migraines don’t really hurt anything other than my head.

So it’s easy for me to not think about the future too much.  Last week was an exception. I was attending a workshop by a fancypants scientist who makes very pretty models.  The last day, we all gave informal presentations on the model we’d been working on and got lots of really good feedback from the class and Dr. Fancypants.  I had a migraine and had to leave – so no advice on my model.

What will I do when I’m teaching classes?  Or have lots of important meetings?  Or just have to deal with a heavier workload?

There are places I can live where my migraines will be less severe, but I think one migraine a month is the best I can hope for.  And I won’t know for sure until I’ve lived in a place for a few months.  My current concern is  broaching the subject with potential graduate advisors.

Part of me knows this isn’t going to be as serious a problem as I fear it will be.  A successful and well-respected scientist in my field invited me to check out her lab when I applied for graduate school – and she has a chronic illness, too.  But most of the time I’m afraid this is going to really hurt my chances.

I know I asked for your advice just yesterday, but I need your help again, readers!  If you’re in a position to take on grad students, would you consider taking on a student with a chronic illness that would certainly impact their productivity?  Under what conditions?  If you aren’t in a position to take on grad students, are you or do you know a grad student/post-doc/prof with a chronic illness?  How do they do it – what are their coping strategies? What sorts of things seem to be more difficult for them because of the illness?  Do other people think less of them or complain when they’re sick?