Plants Don't Just Live in Habitats; They Create Them!

I have just posted a video from the scene of the action. I show some clumps of alder (Alnus maritima) growing in the Blue River in south central Oklahoma. One glance and you would say that the river is their habitat. (By the way, that habitat, with its white water emerging from the aquifer, is the nicest place to do field studies in Oklahoma in the summer—in fact, it might be the only nice place to do field studies in an Oklahoma summer.)

But the alders are not just growing in the river. They are creating their own habitat, in four ways.

First, once an alder bush starts growing on a rock in the river, its trunks emerge from the water. (Sometimes floods wash away the trunks; they just grow back, usually within a year.) The trunks slow the water down just a little bit. Dead leaves and stems in the river accumulate at the trunk base, as well as some mineral soil. The alder clumps are creating little islands of soil in the river that would not have been there without them. When these dead tissues decompose, the soil can nurture other plants, such as the sycamore saplings that grow up from the soil.

Second, the roots of the alders have little nodules that are filled with Frankia bacteria. Like the more familiar Rhizobium that grows in legume roots, the Frankia bacteria “fix” nitrogen; that is, they take nitrogen molecules from the air (the little air spaces in the soil) and fix it into ammonium molecules, which act as a fertilizer for the alder. It is a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) arrangement: the alder feeds the bacteria, and even protects them from excessive levels of oxygen gas. In turn, the bacteria produce more ammonium than they need. That is, the alder roots are absorbing nitrogen atoms from the inside, not from the outside. But it goes beyond this: when the alders lose their leaves, stems, and a few roots, the plant tissues have nitrogen atoms in them that came from the bacteria. But when these dead tissues decompose, the nitrogen atoms go into the soil, where it can be used by other plants, such as the walnut saplings that grow up from the soil.

Third, the roots of the alders have mycorrhizal fungi growing in them. This is what makes them fat and orange rather than skinny and brown the way most roots are. The alder feeds the fungi, and in turn the fungi extend their filaments out into the soil and absorb phosphate ions more effectively than could the roots themselves. It is a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) arrangement: the alder feeds the fungi. In turn, the fungi absorb more phosphate than they need. That is, the alder roots are absorbing phosphorus atoms from the inside, not from the outside. But it goes beyond this: when the alders lose their leaves, stems, and a few roots, the plant tissues have phosphorus atoms in them that came from the fungi. But when these dead tissues decompose, the phosphorus atoms go into the soil, where it can be used by other plants, such as the dogwood bushes that grow up from the soil.

But wait, there’s more! Fourth, the mycorrhizae of one alder clump can connect with those of another alder clump, causing the whole alder woodland to form an interconnected whole. They can share nutrients and even send signals to one another. This is the “wood-wide web” that Suzanne Simard first wrote about in 1997. The individual alder clumps create their own individual habitats in three ways, and a collective habitat in a fourth way. How cool is that?

Natural selection does not always favor competition and warfare among species. It can favor cooperation and mutualism. Natural selection favors whatever works: sometimes competition, sometimes cooperation, so long as it enhances the reproduction of the individuals, in this case, the alders. The alders are doing well by doing good.

When to Give Up and Trust the Future: My Farewell to the Seaside Alder

As I look into a new decade, I see the imminent approach of retirement. A major focus of my professional work has been to understand, and to save, a rare species of shrub known as the seaside alder (Alnus maritima). My colleagues and I have found that:

• This species may persist only from clonal resprouts; the seeds, though often abundant, only germinate on wet, sunny gravel, a condition that was common after the last ice age but is now rare.
• This alder species is less shade-tolerant than other, more abundant alder species in North America.

In the entire world, this species consists only of three subspecies:

• A maritima var. maritima grows only in small, scattered populations in bogs around the Delmarva Peninsula.
• A maritima var. georgiensis grows only in a single swamp in northwestern Georgia.
• A maritima var. oklahomensis grows only in south central Oklahoma along part of the Blue River and a few nearby creeks.

That’s it, for the entire world. Only a few of the populations are protected.

In this photo from the Blue River in Oklahoma, the alder is the right foreground tree.

There are a few of the Delmarva alders in Trap Pond State Park; the others are unprotected. My colleague Phil Gibson and I looked for one population that was documented in the 1970s, only to find that it consisted of just one shrub, in someone’s back yard. We did not tell them about it, lest they cut it down before the much-feared federal government could tell them that they could not.

Most of the Georgia alders are on private land; a few are now, thanks to the work of Catherine Borer, protected by the major utility of the region, which has a large power plant nearby.

Many of the Oklahoma alders are on state wildlife land, and are thus protected.

I did not pursue the option of trying to get the federal government to list this species as endangered. In 2010, I talked with the Southeast district director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. She said this species was already on a list which was the subject of litigation; the plaintiffs thought the FWS was proceeding too slowly. The director told me that, even if the suit was won, they could not work on it until 2016. I decided to try other options.

This species produces antibiotic compounds in its branches. Not being a chemist, I cannot identify these compounds, though I have identified a number of their properties. A small pharmaceutical company in Massachusetts was interested in developing it, but just when the papers were signed and they began their research, Little Pharma was bought up by Big Pharma, which is hostile toward the development of new antibiotics, regardless of how much they are needed. Big Pharma, perhaps only by neglect, killed this line of research.

The Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma attempted to grow some of these alder bushes in a portion of the Blue River that they reclaimed from degradation by cattle. This was the vision of Jona Tucker, who saw this eroded stretch of river and saw a new riparian forest. But deer would eat the little saplings. Only deer fencing—which washed away with every flood—could keep the deer out. The Preserve is still there, but without a thriving population of alders.

I then attempted to get Oklahoma gardeners to plant this species in their wetlands. A few of them did, but not many. One such gardener sold the land and moved, and the fate of what the new owner probably thought was a worthless bush is unknown. Few gardeners have the approximately 10-foot-by-10-foot wet area in the sun that a single bush requires. My former student Sonya Ross has planted several of them on the campus of Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Will they be maintained after I am gone and she is gone also? I have also attempted to get the Tulsa Botanic Garden to plant them extensively to hold down the soil of their new plantings and to educate Tulsans about this important native species. As far as I know, only a few alders have been grown and none planted outdoors.

A botanist in Mississippi recently contacted me for some seeds, which I sent to him.

I cannot save this species single-handedly, nor can my colleagues Phil or Catherine, nor can any one person. I was hoping I could have the salvation of this species be my crowning achievement, but this dream has died. This species enriches the soil by harboring nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its roots, and produces medicinally important compounds in its branches. I am just going to have to trust the future. I know that the pharmaceutical angle will not work. Researchers in Oregon seem to have rediscovered the antibiotic compound, which is found not just in the rare seaside alder but in the incredibly abundant red alder as well; the medicinal angle will not help save the rare species. Maybe the FWS will classify the species as endangered. But it was a low priority under the Obama Administration, and all endangered species are now the personal enemies of Donald Trump. Maybe someday someone will rediscover a few of the shrubs at Trap Pond or along the Blue River or in Mississippi. Maybe someone at Southeastern, decades from now, will remember what these trees are.

Disabling a Century of Progress

Welcome readers, most of whom are from the United States. For those of you who are in Canada, Russia, France, Germany, India, and Bangladesh (according to my blog map), you might learn something today about the United States, and I regret to say that it will not be good.

The twentieth century saw an astonishing degree of progress in the United States with regard to saving natural areas and wild species, and protecting human health. The momentum of public health and conservation continued through both Democratic and Republican administrations. The current Republican leadership of the House, however, seems determined to disable all of this progress.

An article in the May 29, 2015 issue of Science describes how the House is doing this. The authors focused on five bills that have either passed or been advanced in the House and that pose a danger to:

• Clean Air Act
• Clean Water Act
• Occupational Safety and Health Act
• Endangered Species Act
• Consumer Product Safety Act

 The Republican House does not want to stir up notice by actually repealing these laws, but they are deliberately disabling their implementation by agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. They do so by methods the authors call insidious, and you would probably agree with them. Among the excuses the House is using to disable these prominent pieces of twentieth century legislation are:

• Putting Congress in charge of deciding the regulations. The Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) act is supposed to “rein in” the agencies by requiring Congressional approval of new agency regulations. Here is the most insidious part: if either house of Congress fails to act (which, as we all know, is in fact the norm) then the agency’s new regulations cannot be put into effect.
• Create new bureaucracy. House Republicans like to create the image that they are cutting out bureaucracy, but actually they want to create more of it. The Regulatory Accountability Act and the Sound Science Act create many new requirements on the processes by which federal agencies implement new regulations. The new requirements would add an additional $250 million a year to EPA at the same time that Congress is slashing its budget.
• Disable the information gathering process. The Secret Science Reform Act requires agencies to make public all sources of information upon which they base their decisions. This sounds great except when you consider that many of the data about effects of pollutants on human health are taken from studies that include confidential health records. Therefore the agencies cannot use the most important source of data on which pollution regulations are based.
• Manipulating the membership of advisory committees. The EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act would require two major changes to EPA advisory committees. First, industry representatives would be allowed control over the regulations; and, second, any scientist who has received EPA funding becomes ineligible to serve on the committees.

 The result will be inevitable: no new pollution regulations and no new endangered species designations.

The Republicans who control Congress like to identify themselves with Christianity and the God of Love. But these actions reveal their true thinking. They seem to be thinking, first, “We love you, but we don’t care if environmental toxins kill you,” and, second, “We love God’s creation but we don’t care how much of it is destroyed.” Each of these lines of thinking contains fatal inconsistencies and is clearly indicative of hypocrisy regarding religion. This is one reason that I believe Congressional Republicans are just using Christianity as a shield to deflect criticism and behind which to hide their real agenda.

I was hoping someday to get endangered species protection for Alnus maritima, the seaside alder shrub, one of the rarest trees in the world. This seems to now be a hopeless endeavor. Instead, my focus is going to be on getting as many people as possible to plant this shrub in their gardens. Private rescue of endangered species worked for the ginkgo, the Franklinia, and the Torreya; it may be the only hope of the seaside alder and other rare plant species. With animals, of course, it is not so easy. It’s not like you can take an endangered animal species home to live with you. If you might be interested in planting some seaside alder seeds in your garden, let me know at this email, srice@se.edu. 

The Best Time of Year in Oklahoma

May in Oklahoma is the most beautiful time to be outdoors. The summer heat has not yet begun, and all the flowers are open. Sure, you have to go out between rains to see them, and you have to dodge a few tornadoes, but this is the time of year that makes me glad to live in Oklahoma. Come about August and I’m not so sure.

This is why the Oklahoma Native Plant Society chooses mid-May as the time for the annual Wildflower Workshop. On Saturday, May 16, a few dozen wildflower lovers took a field trip to three places in south central Oklahoma.

The first was one of the last remaining native prairies in south central Oklahoma. On U.S. 70 west of Durant, it used to be called Carpenter’s Meadow until it was divided up for “development.” Most people saw it as a green and brown square that was a mere canvas for construction. This includes the huge new Methodist Church. However, two of the church members (Dr. Connie Taylor, botanist, and Dr. Gordon Eggleton, physical scientist, both retired from Southeastern Oklahoma State University) are scientists and they managed to convince the church to not convert every last square meter of the property into turf. It was Connie who led the field trip on this little patch of prairie.

After some light rain, the ground was quite soggy, but this did not keep the native plant enthusiasts from walking all over the prairie to find dozens of plant species such as the green milkweed Asclepias viridis (a milkweed that is beautiful even when the flower is not yet open) and Tephrosia virginica, a legume.

The prize, of course, was the prairie orchid Calopogon oklahomensis.

This patch of prairie is threatened not only by churches and businesses but by fracking as well. Notice the fracking well in the background behind this white larkspur Delphinium carolinianum.

Wet and muddy, we got in a bus and went to Ft. Washita, an old fort that was built by the federal government to protect the Chickasaw tribe, which it had forced out of their homeland and into Oklahoma, from the Caddo tribe which was already in Oklahoma. The rocks were crammed with mollusk fossils, as in photos I have posted previously on this blog. It was not long before we were looking for native plants, even right down in the grass beside the picnic tables. ONPS past president Adam Ryburn is always on the lookout for females; this time, it was females of the buffalo grass Bouteloua (formerly Buchloe) dactyloides.

Unlike most grasses, buffalo grass has separate male and female plants.

Down in a low trough in the turf, in the middle of a cemetery full of unmarked Chickasaw graves, there was what looked like little weedy plantains. But a closer look revealed that they were Ophiglossum adder’s-tongues, which are fernlike plants. I took no photos because the lawn mower had not left much.

Our last stop was at the Blue River in Johnston County. Because the granite underneath has not eroded much, the soil is thin and well-drained, which promotes a profuse growth of wildflowers, and allows the Blue River to be relatively clear and have rapids, unlike the usual lazy Oklahoma river that flows past muddy banks formed from limestone soil. The most noticeable flowers were the yellow Coreopsis lanceolata and the deep red Gaillardia pulchella. Down by the river, however, you can also find some magnificent Tradescantia flowers.

Thin gravelly soil on top of the granite boulders allows small plants to grow that would otherwise be shaded out by larger plants. These include the stonecrop Sedum, a flowering plant; velvety smooth mosses; and thin tangles of clubmosses.

A forest fire had destroyed the whole forest in 2011, but many of the trees and shrubs are growing back as thick clumps. Beautiful fungi were sporulating from the dead wood.

Recent rainfall has sent the Blue River into flood stage. However, seaside alders (Alnus maritima, one of the rarest tree species in the world) bravely held their ground (literally! They create the islands they live on) in the roiling waters.

This portion of the Blue River has not been known to have arrowroot (Sagittaria), but some corms of arrowroot had been washed in by the floodwaters and might start a new population there. Forests recover well from, and thrive in the face of, fires and floods. But the prairies cannot survive when the soil is scraped away and turned into parking lots and fracking fields.

Oklahoma-Texas Evolution Road Trip, Part Two. The World of the Past, continued.

Note: I corrected the spelling of Texigryphaea in the previous entry.

On May 31, the participants in the Oklahoma Evolution Road Trip rode in the van up US 177 north of Dickson. Just south of Lake of the Arbuckles is the road that leads to Goddard Youth Camp, about which more later. Right at that intersection is a large new roadcut right through Ordovician marine deposits. You can find this on the geological map of the Arbuckles. You will probably want to enlarge the PDF to 100% and navigate around. The deposit is labeled in salmon as Osv (Ordovician Sylvan Viola Group) at about 34 degrees 23’ latitude and 96 degrees 58’ longitude. We probably also wandered into the OSDh (labeled in purple) which is the Hunton group, of Ordovician-Silurian-Devonian age. Despite the treacherous footing on loose stones, the participants scoured all over the place for fossils, finding mollusks, rings from crinoid stalks (a kind of echinoderm), and brachiopods, which resemble sideways mollusks. Back when these deposits formed, brachiopods were as abundant as mollusks. But brachiopods were either inferior or unlucky during the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, and since that time they have been rare. I found something that might be a fossil or might be a crystal. Interpreting what you see in a fossil deposit is not always as easy as it looks in the books and documentaries. The photos show Mary Kay Johnston and Gordon Stallings, and a brachiopod fossil found by Sharon Young.

Lots of pickup trucks and rigs drove rapidly and loudly up and down the highway. Were there really a dozen red pickups, or was it the same one a dozen times? About the time we heard but did not see a major automobile collision, we decided it was time to go.

We ate lunch at the museum at Goddard Youth Camp, where Clayton Edgar, son of the camp founder, met us. Many school, scout, and church groups stay at this camp. I asked Clayton whether the church groups expect him to tell them about creationism. He said he would if they insisted on it, but their mission was to teach about the deciduous forest, the prairie, and dinosaurs.

Clayton introduced us to Fran the Acrocanthosaur, or at least a cast of her bones. Cephas Hall found the 90 percent complete skeleton near Hochatown in eastern Oklahoma in terrestrial Cretaceous deposits. The story of this skeleton, which was stolen and reclaimed, is told in this book. Clayton showed us where Fran’s major injuries had healed.

This was not to be the last time that Mary Kay was to have an encounter with an acrocanthosaur.

When we got to the top of the Arbuckle Mountains, we could see the Cambrian period Colbert rhyolite (Cc in red, at about 34 degrees 30’ latitude and 97 degrees 15’ longitude on the geological map; note that “Cambrian” is a C with a line through it). The Cambrian period began about 540 million years ago. We stopped at the overlook to see Turner’s Falls, perhaps the most beautiful view in Oklahoma, and Collings Castle, built by a retired OU Professor in the mid twentieth century. (All of us professors are rich enough to build castles.)

Thousands of people stop there, and very few know that the rocks along the little path are actually Cambrian stromatolites of the Cool Creek Formation (Ccm in tan). Stromatolites are formed by single-celled algae and layers of minerals. They are very rare in the fossil record after the Cambrian period, because animals with jaws (which evolved at that time) could easily graze on them. The reappearance of stromatolites after the Permian extinction was part of the evidence that animal food chains had been disrupted worldwide. Stromatolites are found today only in shallow seas that are too salty for animals to live. They look like brains on the heads of the Star Trek Talosians. Gordon Eggleton and I had previously scouted some out, but it was Gordon Stallings who tracked down some much better specimens.

I can't resist telling you that the living plant beside the stromatolite fossil is Cissus incisa in the grape family Vitaceae.

Also, nearby, we saw the Silurian age Sylvan shale. Shale forms from mud, and is usually a rock, but this shale erodes back into mud very easily.

Next we stopped at a scenic overlook where, about 280 million years ago, a very dramatic thing happened. Today Oklahoma is in the middle of the North American Plate, but during the Pennsylvanian period three plates were moving violently in this area. This movement eventually produced warped wrinkles of anticlines and synclines. This is called the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen. An aulacogen is an arm of a three-way junction in which a continental plate is breaking up in three directions. During the Pennsylvanian period, forces beneath the plate pushed up the Arbuckle Mountains, raising up the Cambrian and Ordovician layers that had already hardened into rock. Aulacogens can cause whole mountains to collapse to form valleys known as grabens, which subsequently filled in. This was one such place: 280 million years ago cliffs of Ordovician rock (Owk, Ordovician West Spring/Kindblade, cream colored on the map) towered over a deep valley. Violent erosion washed large chunks of rock into the valley, and minerals glued them together into some of the most amazing conglomerate rock (IPcr, Pennsylvanian Collings Ranch conglomerate in blue on the map). Look on the map at about 34 degrees 25’ latitude and 97 degrees 11’ longitude, follow the faint line that indicates Interstate 35. These violent crustal movements also broke up the Ordovician limestone into big chunks.

We then drove east into land in which pre-Cambrian granite had been pushed to the top. It is the pCgg, Precambrian granitic gneiss at about 34 degrees 22’ latitude and 96 degrees 37’ longitude, which is light orange with red x’s on the map. Granite, an igneous rock, has no fossils, and erodes more slowly than limestone. The Blue River flows through this granite, which is perhaps why the water is clearer than that of the Washita which drains primarily limestone.

It was finally time for us to see something alive, not dead. I introduced the group to one of the rarest trees in the world, the seaside alder, Alnus maritima.

The Oklahoma seaside alder is (along with the Georgia and Delmarva seaside alders) one of three remnant populations of a species that had once been widespread. Alder seeds germinate in sunny, wet gravel, of which there was a lot at the end of the last ice age but which is rare today. Today, if the ground is wet it is shady. My research has shown that the alders produce thousands of healthy seeds but no seedlings survive past their first year. You can download a PDF of the article here.

We also compared three different evolutionary adaptations to two different kinds of habitats. Oak trees grow slowly and produce strong wood in stable forests, where they can “expect” to live for centuries. But alders and cottonwoods live in unstable riparian habitats, where floods frequently wash the trunks away. Cottonwoods grow quickly and produce cheap wood, since they can “expect” to live only about a century; a large flood kills them. Alders produce numerous weak trunks, which get killed every few years by floods (or, in this case, a large fire that burned the forest in 2011). The underground clump, however, can survive for perhaps centuries. They start growing back immediately after fires and floods.

Evolution has, therefore, produced a great variety of adaptations. No single adaptation is “the best.” Oaks, cottonwoods, and alders all prosper in different ways. Stromatolite algae, acrocanthosaurs, echinoderms, mollusks, and brachiopods all prospered (and some continue to prosper or at least, like brachiopods, cling to survival) in different ways.

Attacks on Ancient Trees

On January 4, unknown vandals burned two large eucalyptus trees in Australia. The ghost gum trees (Corymbia aparrerinja) in Alice Springs, in the middle of the Outback, were not among the largest trees in the world, but were the largest in these desert springs. Aboriginal people revered them, and Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira made a famous painting of them. These were the trees on the species Wikipedia page for this species.

This is just the most recent of the tree-killings focused on iconic ancient trees. An unknown vandal used a pipe bomb to blow up the nation’s largest elm tree (Ulmus americana) in Louisville, Kansas, in 1998. In 2000 a vandal attacked Luna, a large coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), that had become famous when Julia Butterfly Hill had lived in it for many months in protest against the logging of old growth forests.

While such acts of vandalism remain rare, they are disturbing because they appear to be aimed at discrediting the people who wish to protect the Earth for the future of all of us, not just of a particular interest group. Trees produce oxygen that Republicans, Democrats, Buddhists, Islamist extremists, and Moonies all breathe. They are indicators, I believe, of a much more widespread discomfort or even fear that many people (often the same ones who oppose evolutionary science) feel about environmentalism. In short, they know that we are disrupting the Earth in such a way that the survival of technological civilization is in jeopardy and they do not want to face this fact. I see this as the more credible alternative to the idea, which I sometimes believe until I tell myself that it is unlikely to be true, that these vandals are working in the interest of particular large corporations. While it is credible that the vandal that nearly cut down Luna might have worked in the interest of a timber corporation, this is probably not the explanation for the recent attack on the ghost gum trees.

Another possibility is that the ghost gum trees were important to aboriginal peoples, and that the spirituality of aboriginal peoples (everywhere) is a threat to our modern, individualist, selfish civilization. I am not saying that the religious beliefs of Aborigines are any more likely to be true than those of my own Cherokee tribe. But they provide at least a framework of response and adaptation to a threatening world, a framework that individualists do not have.

My response? I decided to redouble my efforts at planting trees. My wife and I walk along Joe Creek in Tulsa. Creek is an undeserved honorific name for a big drainage ditch. (I thought about renaming it the Sir Francis Creek, but that is even more honorific.) When we find persimmon seeds (Diospyros virginiana) inside of dried raccoon droppings (fresh seeds will not germinate), we stick them in the ground in places that they are likely to thrive. Actually, my wife lets me do this while she walks around and pretends to not know me. Maybe someday a little grove of clonal persimmon trees (which can spread from even one surviving seedling) will prevent clumps of Tulsa from eroding down into Joe Creek.

And I also decided to donate some seaside alders (Alnus maritima) left over from my research to Up With Trees, a Tulsa urban forestry group. Tulsa is outside of the current native range of this species, but as one of the world experts on this species I can say the following. First, it is probably within the pre-historical range of the species. Second, it is unlikely to become invasive. Although it produces thousands of viable seeds, the seeds only germinate under conditions that rarely occur.

Botanist William Libby has planted California coast redwood seedlings in New Zealand and giant sequoia seedlings in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey. Who knows if these seedlings might be the only survivors of their species, if California (the native home of both) becomes too hot and dry for them? I will probably not, within my lifetime, see the deaths of the giant sequoias that I admired as I grew up in California and on my many visits back to them. Limited as I am to Oklahoma, I cannot plant redwoods—they would most likely die. But I can plant a few trees, which may not amount to much but they are a defiance against the tree vandals. And who knows that the seaside alder might survive, a century from now, only around some wetland in Tulsa?