Plants and Pipettes

This week, Tegan found the truth about a song from 2012. We also discuss lots of plant and non-plant science from the last week or so. Did you know that cuttlefish are as smart as a toddler?

• Whale fall – Wikipedia
• Adele – Skyfall Lyrics 
• Joram’s work stuff: Wissenstransfer
• This sea slug cut off its own head—and lived to tell the tale 
• A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children
• ‘Giant luminous shark’: researchers discover three deep-sea sharks glow in the dark
• Tree love 
• You’re Not Imagining It. Climate Change Is Making Allergy Seasons Start Earlier 
• Kyriarchy 
• Watch a Super-Elusive Moonflower Cactus Bloom in This Gorgeous, Rare Time Lapse
• The cactus in “Crazy Rich Asian”: Epiphyllum oxypetalum
• Cannabis: it’s a climate gas : Research Highlights
• MC Hammer follow-up: Hammer time! Baby fish brain lights up listening to U Can’t Touch This – video; Australian scientist gets baby fish to bust a move to MC Hammer classic 
• Your Indifferent Cat Won’t Choose Your Friend Over Your Enemy, Research Finds
• Do conversations end when people want them to?

Check out the new episode of the Plant Book Club!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

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We’re super happy to have a special guest with us this week. Aly Baumgartner is a paleontologist with a specialty in paleobotany. With her, we talk about how to find plant fossils, how to analyse them and so much more about the fascinating world of plant based paleontology. 

• Aly’s first author paper we mention on the show 
• The cool 80s collab paper we mention
• Plumology (FEATHERS) with Dr. Allison Shultz — alie ward 
• Rahab N Kinyanjui, on twitter @rkinyanji
• Phytoliths on Plants and Pipettes Instagram
• A truckload of fossils on Aly’s instagram
• Aly on instagram
• Aly on twitter
• Aly on YouTube
• What is a Herbarium? | A New Way to Museum
• What is a Fruit? | A New Way to Museum

Thanks again to Dr. Aly Baumgartner for taking the time to talk to us about paleobotany.

Check out the new episode of the Plant Book Club!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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On a week that exhausted us both we slowly descend into madness and conspiracy theories. This episode could be the last that you hear from us – but it won’t be. We talk about a cool genus of plants, Mexican botanist Helia Bravo Hollis and the right way to draw icebergs. 

• The Song of Achilles
• Flora and Friends Podcast
• Tropaeolum/Nasturtium 
• Flashes in the Twilight – Science Talk Archive
• Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)
• ‘Flashes upon the inward eye’ : Wordsworth, Coleridge and ‘Flashing Flowers’ – Wordsworth Grasmere 
• New waterproof surface is ‘driest ever’
• How to use nasturtium & recipe collection
• Thank you, Luis de Luna!
• Helia Bravo Hollis (1901 – 2001) Google Doodle in her honour, A lifetime among Cacti: Helia Bravo-Hollis – Biodiversity Heritage Library 
• MC HAMMER on Twitter: “You bore us. If science is a “commitment to truth” shall we site all the historical non-truths perpetuated by scientists 
• ? Of course not. It’s not science vs Philosophy … It’s Science + Philosophy. Elevate your Thinking and Consciousness. When you measure include the measurer.… https://t.co/ZXGObNdJei” 
• Impact of Bt Brinjal Cultivation in the Market Value Chain in Five Districts of Bangladesh 
• The Impacts of GM Foods: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial of Bt Eggplant in Bangladesh
• Vivid biofluorescence discovered in the nocturnal Springhare (Pedetidae)
• Iceberger
• There’s a Secret Message Coded Into Percy’s Parachute. But It’s Not The Only One  
• Calibrating Mars
• Percy Rover on TwitterA new reproductive mode in anurans: Natural history of Bokermannohyla astartea (Anura: Hylidae) with the description of its tadpole and vocal repertoire
• Sticking to its roots: taking action to save the sweet potato’s name | Kew
• (2786) Proposal to change the conserved type of Ipomoea, nom. cons. (Convolvulaceae)
• Australia: Oldest rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo

Check out the new episode of the Plant Book Club!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

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Welcome to another week of doomsday escapism. We bring you a cool story about transpiring tomatoes, wonder about wild cotton and are suspicious about road-side super-plants. And we ask: What is your favourite idiom that translates poorly into English? 

Transpiration from Tomato Fruit Occurs Primarily via Trichome-Associated Transcuticular Polar Pores, Eric A. Fich, Josef Fisher, Dani Zamir, Jocelyn K.C. Rose, Plant Physiology Dec 2020, 184 (4) 1840-1852; DOI: 10.1104/pp.20.01105

• Milestones in Genomic Sequencing
• A wealth of discovery built on the Human Genome Project — by the numbers
• Modified genes can distort wild cotton’s interactions with insects; Study in Scientific Reports
• Gossypium hirsutum
• Global Plant Science Event Calendar
• The Weeds in Your Bird Seed | awkward botany
• Polina Volkova is doing research on radiation effects on plants
• Experts identify ‘super-plant’ that absorbs roadside air pollution
• It is Fishing Cat February my dudes
• Gone fishing: the fight to save one of the world’s most elusive wild cats 
• And of course February is Black History Month.

Check out the new episode of the Plant Book Club!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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• Tomatoes. We can’t live without them
• Very good
• They do dry out though eventually which is not so good
• When plants dry out (transpire), they do that with their stomata
• BUT: TOMATOES ARE ASTOMATOUS
• The fruits don’t transpire through stomata 
• HOW I ask HOW?!
• Well actually there are other ways to transpire
• 9 out 10 transpiration experts agree that the cuticular (wax layer) blocks a lot of transpiration, but not all of it
• BUT HOW do they transpire when there is a layer of wax that is impermeable to water
• Good question
• Nobody knows
• UNTIL NOW
• It could be through the cuticular. The wax layer could be differently THICK or made from different waxes
• or it could have spots where hydrophilic sugars let water through
• who knows
• guess what, we will know in like ten minutes
• So the researchers first needed things to compare. Without compare no information share
• They screened almost 400 (398) tomato varieties from three species in the field for their water retention abilities
• Some transpire a lot, others less so
• They picked exemples from both extremes: four low-water-loss lines, and five high-water-loss lines
• Now they could compare them and try to find what one group had that made it better than the other group
• They measured many things
• Was it cuticular thickness –> NO correlation with water loss
• What about cuticle permeance -> NAH
• Or cuticle composition? Guess what (no)
• Nothing correlated with the water loss behaviour
• so what could it be?
• THEY NOTICED SOMETIN
• to control for damage of the cuticle, they would use a water soluble staining solution. If the cuticle was damaged, it would show up as blue spots
• Oh my gosh there were so many blue spots but they were tiny
• Upon closer inspection it turned out to be small holes
• from trichomes!
• Trichomes are the pointy needle bits on tomato stems and fruit
• When the trichome breaks, it leaves a small spot that is water soluble
• and guess what: the tomatoes that easily lost water had more trichome holes than the ones that kept their water
• The whole story gives a good indication about tomato fruit transpiration and sets a goal for breeders: trichome number on fruit might best be kept low to avoid transpiration during transport
• Because interestingly: wild relatives of tomatoes have less trichomes on their fruit, but the more we domesticated them, the more trichomes they would accumulate as a biproduct of breeding

It snowed! Well, not that you can see any of that, but we’re excited nonetheless. We’re also excited about this week’s topics: we’re talking about fabulous Acacias in Central Africa, the road towards more accessible science and a lot of homework that other people did for us. 

Acacia senegal or Senegalia senegal, (& Vachellia (Acacia) seyal)  
The ancient trade holding back the Sahara Desert
When we talked about gum like substances: Don’t send Tom Cruise, send three to four Arabidopsis
The Acacia (re)naming debate: Science, sentiment and territorial chauvinism in the acacia name change debate

• Caroline M. Solomon
  • How I self-advocate for researchers with disabilities and illnesses
  • My international career journey as a disabled scientist
  • Justin Yerbury AM on Twitter: “I recently wrote to the @NHMRC and to the Health minister @GregHuntMP about what I felt was a breach of the disability Act during my application for an Investigator Grant. This is how it played out. A thread. 1/13 Ping @ABCnews @Naturenews”
  • “Textbook case” of disability discrimination in grant applications
  • Using alt text to make science Twitter more accessible for people with visual impairments 
• Curse of knowledge
• Feelings make people pass up perfectly tasty brown fruit 
• This Flower Is Really a Fungus in Disguise 
  • Pseudoflowers produced by Fusarium xyrophilum on yellow-eyed grass (Xyris spp.) in Guyana: A novel floral mimicry system?
• Copied homework
  • Lost moss found again (thanks, @basicgabril)
  • Atmospheric oxygen over Phanerozoic time (thanks, @mic_bog)
  • “Induction of embryonic callus is important for maize genetic engineering. To get the callus is not that easy, and the genes influencing callus formation are line-specific. So when you succeed with one cultivar, you may not succeed to induce callus in other.” (Thanks @mari_jaguar)
• DALL-E, an AI that creates art
• A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human? | GPT-3
• Purring crickets
  • Responses of intended and unintended receivers to a novel sexual signal suggest clandestine communication
  • Singing in secret: Crickets that purr are protected from a deadly natural enemy
  • Purring Crickets: The Evolution of a Novel Sexual Signal | The American Naturalist: Vol 192, No 6

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

This episode is TNT (it’s dynamite) and it’s blue (da ba dee)! We got an email from a spinach that brought us to learn more about the material sciences of plants and we talk about lots of blue facts! Also: science bots! 

• Wong, M., Giraldo, J., Kwak, SY. et al. Nitroaromatic detection and infrared communication from wild-type plants using plant nanobionics. Nature Mater 16, 264–272 (2017).
• The report that went viral
• Gyroporus cyanescens
• Blue genome: chromosome‐scale genome reveals the evolutionary and molecular basis of indigo biosynthesis in Strobilanthes cusia 
• Scientists Sequence Genome of World’s Fastest-Growing Plant | Genetics
• Get the hell off my carpet! – Plants and Pipettes
• Review with care
•  Journal papers, grants, jobs … as rejections pile up, it’s not enough to tell academics to ‘suck it up’ 
• Why blue flowers are rare
• Fragmentary Blue: Resolving the Rarity Paradox in Flower Colors
• Risk of being scooped drives scientists to shoddy methods 
• What institutional reforms will make science more efficient and reliable?
• How some plants adapt to shade
• Photonic multilayer structure of Begonia chloroplasts enhances photosynthetic efficiency 
• 33 year old bat does assisted flying

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

This week, we’re talking about noble rhubarb and an amazing story of a female adventurer, botanist and tavern owner, Jeanne Baret. Plus speculations about the moon, a lot of great inventions and a parrot who likes crisps.

• Rheum nobile – Wikipedia
  • Rheum nobile was a top find on our… – Alpine Garden Society
  • Noble Rhubarb — In Defense of Plants
  • Flavonoids in translucent bracts of the Himalayan Rheum nobile (Polygonaceae) as ultraviolet shields
  • A new pollinating seed‐consuming mutualism between Rheum nobile and a fly fungus gnat, Bradysia sp., involving pollinator attraction by a specific floral compound
  • Ultraviolet screening increases with elevation in translucent bracts of Rheum nobile (Polygonaceae), an alpine ‘glasshouse’ plant from the high Himalayas
  • Optical and anatomical characteristics of bracts from the Chinese “glasshouse” plant, Rheum alexandrae Batalin (Polygonaceae), in Yunnan, China
  • Pollen development of Rheum nobile Hook.f. & Thomson (Polygonaceae), with reference to its sterility induced by bract removal 
  • More images on twitter
• Jeanne Baret – Wikipedia; The Discovery of Jeanne Baret 
• Things Women In Literature Have Died From
• Bias: Escalation of commitment
• Moonstruck sleep: Synchronization of human sleep with the moon cycle under field conditions
• Women temporarily synchronize their menstrual cycles with the luminance and gravimetric cycles of the Moon
• A robot arm toting a Venus flytrap can grab delicate objects 
• Gardyn: The 100 Best Inventions of 2020 | TIME
• 100 Best Inventions of 2020 | TIME – TIME 
• Seeds transfer their microbes to the next generation
• There is more to flowering than those DAM genes: the biology behind bloom in rosaceous fruit trees
• Eloisa James – Wikipedia
• Akito Arima – Wikipedia
• How to pick the perfect avocado
• CRISPARROT

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

Watch out! It’s a snake! Or is it? In this week’s episode, we’re diving deep underground in the search for the reason behind stunted root growth and we talk about animals that pretend to be dangerous – and some that actually are. 

• Plant roots sense soil compaction through restricted ethylene diffusion, BY BIPIN K. PANDEY, GUOQIANG HUANG, RAHUL BHOSALE, SJON HARTMAN, CRAIG J. STURROCK, LOTTIE JOSE, OLIVIER C. MARTIN, MICHAL KARADY, LAURENTIUS A. C. J. VOESENEK, KARIN LJUNG, JONATHAN P. LYNCH, KATHLEEN M. BROWN, WILLIAM R. WHALLEY, SACHA J. MOONEY, DABING ZHANG, MALCOLM J. BENNETT, SCIENCE15 JAN 2021 : 276-280
  • Full paper on researchgate
  • Link to video
  • An article by the authors on The Conversation

• 1st preserved dinosaur butthole is ‘perfect’ and ‘unique,’ paleontologist says
• A cloacal opening in a non-avian dinosaur, Current Biology 
• Hissing like a snake: bird hisses are similar to snake hisses and prompt similar anxiety behavior in a mammalian model
• Do German snakes go ß ß ß ß ß ßß ß ß ß ß ßß ß ß ß ß ß ? : shittyaskscience
• These rats use toxic hair products to fight of attackers – and they purr
• Poison Peas and the Australian Arms Race 
• A thread of animals disturbing wildlife photographers
• Gribble 
• Molecular insight into lignocellulose digestion by a marine isopod in the absence of gut microbes
• Tea Bag Index: a novel approach to collect uniform decomposition data across ecosystems
• Altered N-glycan composition impacts flagella-mediated adhesion in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
• Intoxicating chemicals in catnip and silver vine protect felines from mosquito bites
• Not to stimulate cats, they said – Plants and Pipettes 

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

In this episode, Joram presents not only a plant but an entire order of plants, mostly because he has no idea how plant nomenclature works. Tegan presents the life and work of two important women, Matilda Gage and Margaret Rossiter. Aren’t we two little overachievers? 

• Joram’s favourite plant: the order of Cycads
  • study 1 found that male cycads branch more often than female cycads, which makes sex determination in the field more reliable
  • study 2 found that anti-transpirants make no difference in the propagation of cycads by stem cuttings
• Matilda Joslyn Gage 
• Margaret W. Rossiter
• Matilda effect
• Matthew effect
• Study finds future too warm for baby sharks
• Lasso locomotion expands the climbing repertoire of snakes
• KMS1 and KMS2, two plant endoplasmic reticulum proteins involved in the early secretory pathway 
•  Study of flowers with two types of anthers solves mystery that baffled Darwin 
• Chili Pepper Compound Is Spicing Up Solar Cell Performance
• Direct Observation on p- to n-Type Transformation of Perovskite Surface Region during Defect Passivation Driving High Photovoltaic Efficiency
• XKCD comic: Cells 
• Interactive Learning experience: Cameras and Lenses 
• https://gage.500womenscientists.org/ 
• Magnets dim natural glow of human cells, may shed light on how animals migrate: First direct observation of magnetic field affecting autofluorescence of flavins in living cells
• Cellular autofluorescence is magnetic field sensitive
• A new domestic cat genome assembly based on long sequence reads empowers feline genomic medicine and identifies a novel gene for dwarfism 
• Cinnamon Roll Cat : aww 

Correction: Tegan mentions that trees have two genders. This is wrong. Trees have two sexes, genders is a social construct that applies more to humans than to trees. Sorry for that.

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

We’re back! After an extended winter break we return with a cool new paper and lots and lots of science fun facts somewhat related to plants! 

Elgetti Brodersen, K., Kühl, M., Trampe, E. and Koren, K. (2020), Imaging O2 dynamics and microenvironments in the seagrass leaf phyllosphere with magnetic optical sensor nanoparticles. Plant J., 104: 1504-1519.

• Giant Crested Newts
• Joram’s talk at rC3, Sources
• Knowledge about the nature of science increases public acceptance of science regardless of identity factors
• Mistletoe paper and our podcast episode
• Climate Czar
• These spiders may sew leaves into fake shelters to lure frogs to their doom 
• 2000 Year-old Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) Aboriginal food remains, Australia 
• The Path of the Bogong – Festivals of the Mountains | The People & Environment Blog
• Bogong Moth
• Bogongs migrate south › Nature Features (ABC Science)
• Docking of acetyl-CoA carboxylase to the plastid envelope membrane attenuates fatty acid production in plants
• Tomato Seed-Associated Bacteria Confer Protection of Seedlings Against Foliar Disease Caused by Pseudomonas syringae 
• Cheaper to prevent pandemics than ‘cure’ them
• Rob N Roll on Twitter: “Scientists recently discovered that rats love driving tiny cars, even when they don’t get treats. When put in mazes adapted to tiny cars, the rats just enjoyed cruising around.… https://t.co/j0VTqyOhwJ“
• The actually study: Enriched environment exposure accelerates rodent driving skills
• Nicaraguan zoo shows off white tiger cub Nieves 

Check out the new episode of the plant book club! And while you’re there, also go and check out Flora-L Design!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!