Seed banks and biodiversity

The BBC recently had this nice story of a minute waterlily brought back from extinction through stored seed:

"Two years ago, this delicate bloom went extinct in the wild due to over-exploitation of its habitat.

Luckily its seeds were kept in storage - and were used by Carlos Magdalena to regrow the plant at Kew Gardens - just outside London.

It took him months to find the ideal conditions for growth. He hopes now that the Thermal Lily will flourish once again in the hot springs of Rwanda...." (read more)

There is also a passionate piece on the urgency of banking seed as a way of safeguarding species for the future:

"Kew's Millennium Seed Bank is a unique, global asset. It is the largest facility of its kind in the world and contains the world's most diverse seed collections.

Over the past 10 years, more than 3.5 billion seeds from 25,000 species have been collected and stored in their country of origin and in Kew.

Species are chosen by country partners according to whether they are rare or endangered or of particular potential use - for example as medicine, food, animal fodder or shelter.

Described by Sir David Attenborough as "perhaps the most ambitious conservation initiative ever", the partnership will announce on 15 October the banking and conservation of 10% of the world's plant species." (read more)

And if you thought cities were a desert, in terms of biodiversity, you couldn't be more wrong:

"There are four bodies lying and crouching in our tiny back garden. The ecologists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) got here only minutes ago, but, while the kettle boils, they are already grubbing about behind our bins, under our windowsills, in the lawn, flowerbed and log pile.

They are doing a "bioblitz" – trying to find as many species of animal and plant as possible in this small, suburban south-west London garden. Our back garden is only 12 paces long and seven wide, with, now I look at it through the eyes of ecologists, pitifully few flowers. Happily, they appear undaunted. "The great thing is, even with gardens like this that look fairly sterile, there's always something there," says the museum's insect specialist, Stuart Hine. "We'll move plant pots, and we'll have a look through your log pile . . . Lots of spiders, centipedes, woodlice, slugs – they'll all be there."" (read more)

Photosynthesising sea slug

Usually only plants can make food directly from sunlight, but a sea slug has been discovered which incorporates algal chloroplasts into its own cells and is performing photosynthesis:

"Some related slugs also engulf chloroplasts but E. chlorotica alone preserves the organelles in working order for a whole slug lifetime of nearly a year. The slug readily sucks the innards out of algal filaments whenever they’re available, but in good light, multiple meals aren’t essential. Scientists have shown that once a young slug has slurped its first chloroplast meal from one of its few favored species of Vaucheria algae, the slug does not have to eat again for the rest of its life. All it has to do is sunbathe."

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/green-sea-slug/#ixzz0cfzARcr9

Thanks Matthew for the link.

Natural History of Banks Peninsula

Hugh Wilson is legendary on Banks Peninsula for his tireless work creating and maintaining the Ohinewai Reserve, which is being re-vegetated to resemble its original natural state. In addition to his work on Hinewai, Hugh has spent the last 5 years conducting a grid survey of the flora and fauna of the entire Peninsula. This book is a report of his findings, lovingly illustrated with his own drawings and the stunning photographs of a number of other contributors. It's a slim, attractive volume, which contains a huge amount of information, and also overflows with Hugh's infectious enthusiasm. It would make a lovely gift for lovers of Banks Peninsula.

Living with Natives: New Zealanders Talk About Their Love of Native Plants

The Canterbury University Press has put out this lovely book in which a wide range of enthusiastic New Zealanders talk about their experiences growing native plants. Their anecdotes and advice are fascinating and idiosyncratic. The people and their gardens have been lovingly photographed; my only complaint is that the colour and contrast rendition in the printing is poor.

Garden at Night

This is an unusual book of garden photographs. All the images were taken at night, in whatever ambient light was available, using long exposures. As a consequence, the plants loom dramatically out of the darkness, and the setting resembles nothing so much as an empty stage or film set. The colours appear not quite as usual. And as a consequence of the long exposures, fine detail is slightly blurred. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Very hungry caterpillars

We thought if we planted swan plants we might attract the monarch butterflies to lay their eggs there. It worked!

Unfortunately, there were far more caterpillars than the plants could support, and after they had devoured all the leaves and flowers, they proceeded to eat the stems:

Some of them tried neighbouring plants, but they didn't seem to like them nearly as much.

Some of them got fat enough to think about building a chrysalis:

Here's a chrysalis (green with gold detailing!)

I picked the stems I could find that had chrysalises on them, and brought them inside. One has hatched so far:





It took a while to dry out its new wings. It trotted up and down the windowsill slowly flapping for a long time.

When it seemed to have got the hang of flying, I took it outside:

So that's one success. There are 2 more chrysalises to hatch, so the ratio of skeleton-ised swan plants to butterflies will probably be 1:1!

Thanks Katie for the plants :-)

Images copyright 2009 Grace Dalley. All rights reserved.