Plant Anatomy with Jim Mauseth

Okay, there we go. All right. Finally took a minute to get
set up here. God, I was losing my mind. Uh, Welcome
to another episode of the Crime paces Bodies in podcast. I'm here with my
friend doctor Jim Mosseth, Professor Emeritus emeritus emeritis. There you go. I
don't know how they pronounce these things emeritis at u T Austin of plant Anatomy.
And thank you for taking the time to do this. We're trying to
get you on for like years. We had a nice day yesterday. Yeah,
that was amazing plants. So yeah, I guess starting rights to start
off. So you you started studying, uh, plant anatomy, but specializing
in cacti specifically, and you've been to South America. You've seen really remarkable
plants like plus Feldia. I want to talk about that. I want to
talk about what it's doing with its tomato those little microscopic gas for us.
Yeah, and then you you've actually done I mean you're I just remember getting
you know, really cool messages, like text messages from me like oh I
just looked at this plant on our microscope and saw this. I mean,
you've got a whole lens on things that a lot of people you know who
are into plants never think about right, I guess, how did you tell
me about how you got into looking at plants and looking up close at plant
anatomy and they're plumbing and all these things. I don't know, really,
I do know how I got interested in cacti. There was a field trip
from the University of Washington, where I was a graduate student, down to
Arizona when spring break, and of course Seattle is cold and rainy and all
the time. Yeah, and we took this. This trip down to Arizona
was sunny and warm and beautiful cactui everywhere. And I didn't know cat guy
at all. I saw this big barrel cactus and just fell in love.
Just I just thought, this is what I want to study. And when
I got back to you, Dub, I told my professor, said,
you know this project I'm working on, I don't really I'm not interested in
it, but I'd like to work on cacti. And he was great because
he said, I don't know anything about cacti, so I don't know if
I can help you, but go ahead and just try on your own,
and if you know, if something turns up, then great. Well,
we'll do it. We'll just go with that and if nothing comes up,
then we'll we'll go for plan B. And so he just he was good
enough to just say, go ahead, try what you want to try and
explore on your own and and it worked. So and when was this when?
Yeah, oh, early eighties, further back seventy one. Oh wow,
Yeah, that's good. So variations on a stem, that's all that
cacti are. It's just variations on a stem, on ribs, stems,
tubercles, et cetera for the most part. Yes, that's exactly right.
Yeah, And so where where are the stomatic because you know, we normally
think about stomach stomata being in leaves, right, but cact i don't.
I mean ninety nine percent of them don't have leaves, except for like Perskia
and the more quotable basal members. Yeah. Well putias do too, right,
those little little ephemerald leaves that falls right, they're they're yeah, they're
just well, you can find you'll probably find stumata almost in a place where
the plant is green. But if a plant is but if the part is
not green, like petals or roots, you're not going to find stumata.
So the main benefit of stumata is that they when they are open, carbon
dioxide can come in rapidly and and allow photosynthesis. And if if they're not
open, or if you have a if you have an organ that doesn't have
stumata, then then there's not going to be very much carbon dioxide getting in
through the through the Q, so photosynthesis will be really slow. So a
lot of Periskias have a few stamata in their stems, right, so they
have most of the stmoda in their leaves but a few in the stems.
And so with the regular characta, you think, well, if you're going
to evolve to be a plant that is stem photosynthetic like most cacti, you
should have ancestors that have a lot of stemoda in their stems. But they
probably didn't that. A lot of the Preskis have either very few stamata in
their stem epidermis or or none, So before cacti could evolve to become leafless,
they had to first evolve to have stamata in their stemafidermas. Right,
And there's actually what because Perreskia got split up for anyone listening, Preski is
one of the more quote unquote basal early branching lineages of cacti, not to
be confused with Pereskiopsis, which is not a true member of that clay that
evolutionary group. Press. Yeah, I think it's anthoid, right, it's
in the antioid subfamily. You got like how many different subfamilies of opuntioid,
cactoid, pereskioid, and then my Junia that really weird. I think that's
in it sown that weird andy and that little that has leaves too technically that
grows at like ten thousand feet in the fucking South America. Right, But
they, I know, they split Perescia up into two genera and it was
based on one of the characters was does it have stomata and the stems are
not? And one of the god, I forget the name of the other
genus. I'm gonna have to look at Lewinbergia, right, which I've seen
in Dominican Republic, and there's one in Wahaka that just looks fucking weird.
It's got verticillate branching, you know, just whirls of branching like a Norfolk
Island pine like segment branches they're just a fucking weird looking plant. But and
it doesn't have it's got like a woody stem, so preferably like most plants
that you know, angiosperms that are not cact i don't if they don't have
stomata in their stems, if it's not green, right, like a correct
right. So this is a this was a thing that cacti kind of had
to evolve. This is a trademark of them. I guess any photosynthetic quote
unquote crucifixion thorn looking desert plant, like whether it's Castilla moorei or or you
know Kenosia halacanthus, which is celeustraci. These are all like stem photosynthesizers.
Zyphus which is in ramnacs and tuocafoli. We can tell you if it's got
chlorophyll in the stem, it's probably got stomata a good chance, but but
you have to look to be sure because if you have, if you don't
have, if you're green and don't have stomata, then what you can do
is recycling photosynthesis. So all this all plant tissues are have to aspire.
And so let's say at night there's no light, that's that's using oxygen.
Yeah, have to use oxygen after inspire, just like we do, and
that respiration gives off carbon dioxide, and at night, that carbon dioxide probably
just gonna be lost out into the air. But if you don't have somata,
then then that carbon dioxide is going to be tend to be trapped in
the stem or in the tissue and can be used in photosynthesis. Can be
used in photosynthesis, So if you're green, then you can just reuse.
You could just keep reusing that that carbon dioxide them efficient. You're never gonna
you're never gonna grow because you're not taking anything new, but you can at
least not lose what you have, So recycling photosynthesis is very handy. Yeah.
Yeah, And of course cacti of course can photosynthesis. Crassolas in asimotabolism.
They're taking in CO two at night for the most part, storing it
in the form of malate malic acid, and then closing their stomata during the
heat of the day and using that stored that's the two they took in earlier
correct to go so so so when this so when so? When cacti evolved,
that was one of the hurdles they had to overcome. That was what
we call probably a key innovation. They evolved, they lost their leaves and
put stomata in their stems, right, and so but you still had I
mean you could see succulent leaves and like Perrescia, Leunbergia and the let's talk
to you. Let's talk about the appointioid clade, because all the prickly parrots
I mean in choya is they've got leaves. But a lot of people don't
realize that they look like little, you know, like half inch to inch
long finger like projections of green succulent tissue. What's going on there? Well,
that's a really handy that's a really handy adaptation. In the in the
subfamily cactuaty where they were, they pretty much have lost their leaves more or
less completely. You lose less water. If you don't have leaves, you
have less surface area, so you lose less water, which is advantageous,
but you can't photosynthesize as much, which is disadvantage so it decreases efficiency.
Yeah. So so with your punchioids and also with you know a lot of
them, the euphobias in this spring time, they euphobias make great big,
nice leaves, but they're like a punci leaves. They're ephemeral, and after
a few weeks they'll just fall off and then it becomes a stem, second
stem photosynthetic. In many euphobias too, the leaves fall off, but they
keep the petiole, They keep the leave stock, which then turns into it
spine. Fine. Yeah, and and so with the cacti, when they
really lost their leaves completely, that got them into a bind. So if
if you've got a really nice year where it's kind of cool and moist a
lot of rain, then then things like a fuky area can can put out
brand new leaves and increase their photosynthetic surface area and and grow like crazy,
and cacked i can't. So they've you have a really good year, there's
nothing you can do to then temporarily boost your photosynthetic surface area. Right,
they don't have they don't have leave, but they can just roll it.
Cactoid cac i can't. They can't just put out a new right leaf right
right, And even you oh punches can't either. They they can if they
put out a whole new pad, then that new pad will have new little
folded leaves on it. Temporarily, but so so losing leaves was a has
good consequences and has bad consequences that you're and and another another thing about leaves
is is if you have a really bad drought, then say you know,
regular plants, oaks, ashes, maples, they can just drop their leaves
if it's really a really bad drought, they can just get rid of this
photosnthetic surface area and then hang on and then the next year, hopefully it's
going to better conditions and make a whole new set of leaves. But cact
i can't do that. So if they have a really bad year, they
can't. There's no extra leaf surface area to ab size and throw away.
So they're just stuck and they have to They can't reduce their surfaceary quickly and
easily like like leafy plants can, right, they got to come up with
a strategy. And I guess in some cacti you see them using spines as
you know shade basically as shade cloth. But you can't generate spines that quickly.
I mean you're basically you know, you can't. You can't generate spines,
you know, new spines within a month or two if it's you know,
in response to drought conditions, you just got to work with what you've
already got. Yeah, right, exactly. So so a lot of these
things, all of these adaptations, and especially in cactivity, are long term.
Their adaptations to what the conditions have been like for thousands and thousands of
years, not this year, right, And and leafy plants can more adapt
to what's what's going on this year and conditions. Right, So it's okay,
Well, I want to talk about uh, the cephilium later because the
you know, like that weird the fence that plants like leelo cactus where but
I want to I want to keep going on this, I guess. So
we've got you got this stem, you've got stomata in it, I mean,
and then you've got you know, you've got spines again actus, the
shakeloth You've also got a layer of of of wax of lipids. Right,
you can produce like in you know, peyote has that thick blue wax on
it. You can also produce you know, like a thick cuticle as well,
like aerocarpus has, which is like a shell. You could see when
you find a dead one, you know that died from drought. You've got
that brown almost looks like a dirty fingernail, you know, like that it
looks like a dirty It's crazy, you know. An astrophytem has that to
an extent too. What are the differences in these two they're both probably like,
I guess what's that cuticle that Aerocarpus has in the farina the acts that
payote and Copia poet produce. We're pretty sure that all plants always produce a
cuticle on their exposed surface areas. Yeah, you can. You probably can
never find any part of a plant that doesn't have a cuticle, and that
you know, it limits water loss. But it's and it's good, but
it's not great. So what is a cuticle for people? Listen, they
explain what it is actually, I mean, it's a layer to keep moisture
in. Yeah, but what is it composed of. It is composed of
fatty acids. So the epidermal cells can generate fatty acids inside themselves and then
there's secrete it to the outside. And when when these fatty acids get to
get to the outer surface, they're basically it's like becoming ransom. They react
with each other, react with oxygen, and they form a they form it's
like a drying varnish and they just form a coating called the cuticle that then
limits the amount of water that can be lost and it slows down the water
loss. If you take a if you'd take a second leaf, like off
of grafted pedalum or something, and peel off the cuticle or peel off the
epidermis, then stick it out in the sun, they would just dry out
immediately. If you leave the cuticle on, then it could stay in the
sun for quite a while without losing very much water. But it seems that
plants can't change the amount of cuticle they produce very easily, but they can
change the amount of wax. So in addition to cuticle, they can also
secrete even longer chain fatty acids. So so, and then these when these
get to the surface, they plymerize into wax. And it looks like that
in bad conditions they'll just make extra extra fatty acids and you get a thicker
layer of wax and that's more adjustable. And that's of course generated only at
the appical marrits. Then, like if it's halfway down the stem, I
don't know, I don't know, can they still generate it? I wonder
like a copy of Poets Divide, like active cell growth, active cell divisions
going on at the center at the top of the plant. Yeah, that
would be a good thing to either look up or do an experiment on that.
And some of the some of the waxes are like just granules like a
farina, and you can just scrape that off with your finger. And so
it'd be interesting to just take a plant that has that and just scrape the
wax off from an older part and come back a few weeks later see if
it's made been able to regenerate. Because those there's obviously living cells beneath there
somewhere they still have the ability to divide, correct and produce these fatty acids,
right, so they might be Yeah, they might be able to.
But either way, this this farina. This whenever I mentioned that in the
video, always put like a picture that fucking sleeves bag actor Dennis Farina's face.
I'm like, it's just so funny, but but that's uh. This
this is like corn meal. It's a type of farina granular dudley is.
It could be a great plant to see farina and like dudley a pulvar a
length. I mean it's so thick, and you can see how hydrophobic it
is. Still you'll pour like when you water a dudley, like a big
one like dudley apolvar a length or brattonia. I mean it just the water
just beats up on there. Oh yeah. And so if it's beating up
on there, it's obviously having a hard time getting out as well. Right,
But it's and the waxes and the cuticle are we talk about, you
know, keeping water inside the plant, but we can we can think of
that in a little bit deeper, deeper way, is that the wax wax
usually is not a smooth layer on the plant. It's more particles or flakes
or rods or hairs and stuff like that. And so it creates kind of
a calm, calm air surface on the plant where there's not moving or very
very produces the boundary layer humidity just just I always for that, I always
use an example, like you know, when they plant those horrible Bombardi poplar
trees at a farm next to a farmhouse. You know, like because you
got agricultural field, it's wide open, it's wind moves across there. But
the house wants a wind break, so you plant those. You add some
topography to that, and of course to us, it doesn't look like there's
topography and the farina of a peyote or a copiapoa, But when you look
at a microscope, there's a lot of topography. Yeah. Yeah, So
if if if a water molecule does get out through open stoma, if the
if the epidermis is smooth, the cuticle is smooth, then there's a good
chance wind was just going to carry that water molecule right be lost. Right,
If I'm screen printing T shirts in my garage and I want that water
based think on the shirts to dry fast, that's how I put a fucking
fan on it. Right. Airflow takes water right exactly. So if you
can, if you can put all this waxy flight flakes or particles around your
stimata, then you're gonna calm that air. Where if if a water molecule
does get out of a stoma, then it might just hang around and might
actually bounce back in and go back into the planet. So it's so just
by by lengthening the lengthening the pathway, by calming the air and by lengthening
the pathway the water has to go to escape, you can conserve water that
way to reduce yea, reducing the airflow right, And I guess spines can
do that too to an extent because you see some of these like that Escobaria
scultariana we saw, so you look at that thing, it was just it
almost looked hairy. You couldn't even see the epidermis, you couldn't barely see
green. So probably there the air right around the body underneath the spines is
probably much more humid than the air away from there. And and it's shaded,
so it's not it's not so much. Oh that's another that's another aspect
about being leafless. So if you're a leafy plant and you're getting too much
sun, you can just wilt. And when when a leaf wils, it
just hangs down. So if you're if the leaf is out horizontally and the
and the sun's up above you, then the leaf is getting all this full
the full surface area exposed to the sun, the entire surface. But if
you can let the leaf just hang straight down, then it has almost no
exposed surface area and it's and it's not getting any sun at all. Really,
Yeah, like changing the angle of the solar panel so it's not overheating
right right, Yeah, leaf is cocked. I can't will they can't do
that. That's a good thing that I think a lot of people don't think
about too with with leaves, is you know, because I'll see plants that
uh, you know, like non cactus plants that I grow, and they'll
have leaves in it and leaves actual leaves and just a green stem and they'll
be someone wilt in the heat of the day and then you come back out
at seven eight pm on a summer night and the leaves are back up.
So it's not necessarily that they're wilting because they're low on water. They're wilding
because they're trying to conserve water in some cases basically, so it's very adaptive
to wilt. And if they have plenty of water then they won't wilt.
But if they have so you can think, well, what would be an
alternative you could You could imagine making a petio out of fibers so that no
matter what happens, that those fibers are going to hold that leaf up into
the sun. Well, then if there's not enough water that then that leaf
is just gonna sunburn because you know, losing vat breeding water out of a
leaf causes it to cool down. So so not putting fibers in there and
just livingly be very very flexible, and so I can well it is very
adaptive. And I mean, yeah, I guess I should say if a
leaf is will thing, it's because of moisture stress. But the added benefit
is that it's also reducing the service there. And I'll see that in desert
plants too, like that as sleepy as prostrata. We saw yesterday that undulate
leaf margin, right, you'll see that in a lot of plants, you
know, And I thought, why would it be doing that? That's just
a weird Why does it do that. It's like the same thing. You're
reducing this angle of the leaf to the sun that's exposed, so it's not
the whole leaf that's exposed, all at the same angle to the sun.
If the margins undulate like that, then you're reducing the full amount. It's
like having a solar panel that you know, like the angle changes along the
margins. It says the sun moves across the sky different parts of leaf,
right, Because this thing's out there laying on sand. It's prostrate, it's
just growing flat along the fucking sand getting blasted by with one hundred and ten
degree heat in Star County with no cover. You know, it's like it's
cool, and then there's all those tiny hairs. God, what I want
to ask I just forgot. I guess we should talk about. Well,
that's what I want to talk about. Sunburn's what's going on because you'll see
plants that in this, of course, should anyone knows this, You'll see
plants that can take full sun like that, the species can take full of
maybe not the individual plant, if you've had it in the shade, whatever,
and then you put it on in full sunny you get a really hot
sunny day. And I've noticed that too, that the amount of sunburn,
that kind of beige coloring on a cactus or a leaf that happens not it's
not just how much light it's getting, it's what the actual temperature of the
area is too. On hotter days, things burn and the same amount of
sunlight that they may not burn in on a cooler day. What is actually
going on when a leaf or a cactus burns. Well, first, probably
all the people who listen to your podcasts know that if you've got a potted
cactus, you should you should really somehow mark the north side. If you've
got to. You've got a plant label in it that says you know,
this is this is a mammalaria. Put that label on the north side.
And so if you ever pick up your pot and move the move the cactus
to a different area, make sure that if that label is still facing north,
so that the south facing side is still facing south. Because if you
pick up a potted plant and rotate it so that the north facing side is
now facing into the sun, it's like if I'm if I'm laying on a
launch air every day for a week and a thong, sipping on a margarita
as you usually do, whereas I usually do, you know, with the
dog at my side. Whatever. I got my glasses on, and then
I switched to I roll over on my on my stomach, and now I'm
gonna try and get my back, and I try to do the same thing
my back because I'm burnt right, yeah, because I don't have melanin.
I have a generated melanin. So it's kind of the same thing with cactli
what's going on. So what's going on with the sunburn? I'm not really
sure. But one of the things that's important is that the membranes inside of
cells are made up of lipids fats, and so just like butter, where
you have butter when it's cool in refrigerator is hard, and when it's you
take it out and put in the in the in the room, it gets
warm and gets soft. The lipids and our membranes and the cell membranes have
to be fluid and not hard, but not too fluid, not too runny,
and so I think a lot of times when you times get too hot
or too or heat up in the sun, then then their membranes become too
fluid and they can't control water loss and water movement and keep everything where they're
supposed to be in so the cells just die. So it's actual, I
mean, it's obviously actual cell death. You see that beige coloration dying.
There's no more chlorophyll there. How's that thing gonna still photosynthesize? Yeah,
So that you know, this is what I want my goal, and this
is why I want to talk to you for so long, because there's so
much shit that people that are into plants. Don't think about that. They
learn maybe in high school biology. They're not thinking about these, you know,
the actual machinery of a cell, which is fascinating stuff. I mean,
it's this abstract thing. You see the diagrams in a science textbook,
and when you look at a microscope, it's like it's not really pretty.
It's kind of even. You can make stuff out clearly, but you got
to translate that. It's like reading another language almost. I want people to
think about this stuff because it's really fascinating shit. And if you learn it
with plants, you can learn it with anything, with other any living thing.
I'm really interested in some fucking lichens, man. I want to see
how that little ask on my seat fungus or in some cases basidia my seat
fungus is farming an algae. But but so so, I guess, yeah,
so with with some burd, I mean, with someburd though, basically
you're you're getting cell toa So now will the if you say you've got like
a peyota or an astrophytem that burns, or or a Copia poa that burns,
which of course we can't grow in Texas because it's just too hot for
them in most cases, What do you do? I mean, it's it's
going to generate new if it stays alive and it's got it's big enough,
it's got enough juice stored up, carbohydrates and water, and it can generate
new growth. And when it generates that new growth, that new growth will
be triggered by cell response, by cell responses to produce more farina. Uh
you know, basically it'll be acclimated to the levels of light and heat that
it's being exposed to. Right yeah, Yeah, The damaged parts are never
going to recover, right that, that can't heal. All it can do
is move further down the stem is the apex continues to produce new cells.
Right yeah. So whereas with us humans, if we get a small amount
of damage to our skin, that can be repaired to a certain extent.
But we get a big damage or skin and that can't be regenerated if we've
actually damaged, you know, killed the the dermois that's when you need a
skin graft. From your answer, that's right, that's right. And plants,
Plants just can't repair any kind of damage to the epidermists that even small
scratches and damage to a plant epidermist can't be healed. But then the plant
is always growing and making new new cells and new epidermis at the top of
this shoot, and so so you'll have this scar, but when it becomes
less and less noticeable noticeable because you have all these new pretty tissues up at
the top. And it seems that when cells are when the new young shoe
tissues are just being formed, they are very capable of producing sunscreens. And
I don't know what they use it for sunscreen, but I guess pigments,
right the case of Cacti beta aanes or non carry off a leal's plants would
be anthocyanins like the red tissue or the red pigment. But I don't know
if betains are very good at blocking UV and and stuff like that. They're
more of just a response to stress. Could be mm hmm. But the
farina, then it's farina would obviously be good at that's more pretty good at
reflecting some UV away from the planet. But but young tissues can adapt and
become and so that they won't sunburn, whereas the older tissues can't adapt and
will sunburn. Okay, So when you if you do take a potted cactus
out and you rotate it, so when part burns, the old part will
burn, but the very young, youngest parts usually won't burn. They'll be
they'll be okay that they can they'll be adapting to the new sunlight. Right.
But if you take a plant from the shade and you put it in
full sun, don't do that on a hot day. But it's also temperature
dependent too, right, So there's obviously a heat response because I've noticed that.
You know, when I was living an Oakland cacti and there's other plants
too that I'd be growing out there where it was four years anything. You
know, Oakland's like perpetually seventy seventy five degrees and they would take full sun
fine, they would almost you know, they would need more. But if
I brought them into a greenhouse in Oakland now, they would start to get
light stressed and burn and look like shit. The ones that were growing in
the shade would grow faster and be bigger. Yeah, I was telling you
about the Lobivia yesterday, were it was growing up at ten thousand feet cool,
cool, cool. It was growing completely open sunlight and getting full sunlight
with no trouble whatsoever. But down at lower altitudes they almost always are growing
under a nurse plant. Yeah, are they're getting some shade? Well what
species was that? Oh? I don't remember, but it was a libivia.
This is in Argentina or Chile, Yeah, Argentina a lot, Yeah,
God, it's a South America. A cactus is not always just a
cactus. People from North American cacti in South American cacti such a difference in
climatic need in what they've evolved with. Somehow, somehow, a lot of
the South American cacti have evolved to be adapted to high altitudes. In the
andes cool cool and dry, cooler and drier, or cool and wet.
The opuncha flocosa will grow up with snowfie and and with the white hairs on
the punch of locosa, and they grow, they grow as mats. So
from a road you'll look, oh, look, there's a snow bank over
there, and you go walk over there, and it's it's not a snow
bank, it's a it's a puncha mound. Jesus. But to get there
you walked through snow. And so these o punches are growing high altitude surrounded
by snow having no trouble whatsoever. It is amazing God South them, Yeah,
the South, and that's I think, And we don't have anything like
that in North America. That's presumed where the cactacely originated with South America.
South America, Yeah, definitely, And we have some some o punches that
can grow pretty good altitudes in the rocky mountains, but not with snow,
not very high altitudes. Its not really cold. Well, there's that a
puncha that grows up in New York I just filmed. That's a Midwest of
puncha. There's one that grows in the sand area that the glacial sand deposits
just south of Chicago puts a HUMIFUSA. What's going on with those? Explain
to everybody how a cat because a lot of people don't realize some of the
opunthioids, some of the punches can take freezing conditions. I mean, these
things grow where it's like negative twenty degrees fahrenheit, but of course they kind
of turn red, they flush with the pigments and they shrivel up. And
that's obviously trying to decrease the amount of water in the cells. Probably,
I mean, I always just assume it's increasing the decreasing the amount of water
so that the salutes in the cell it's high rated, right, right,
What's going on? How do these cacti grow in such frigid places like Massachusetts,
Long Island, fucking Chicago where I grew up in eastern Washington work,
Yeah, right, winter, a punch of fragilests and all these yeah,
and a polycantha grows there, cold, cold, cold, yeah, all
the adaptations, I don't know. They always shrivel though. You whenever you
see a prickly pair and the cold that tolerated it usually will too fall over.
And then then the amazing thing is you see the same plant in the
spring, and there they've lifted themselves back up. It's juiced up like a
Jersey diego. It's just juice that you know. It's like clumping, just
fucking yeah. Man, Yeah, I can understand wil thing I can't really
understand. So I guess I just in the spring they're able to regenerate enough
turget pressure to learn. Oh yeah, they probably lift themselves back up.
Well, that's the thing where I assume you've looked at plenty of cacti roots
before it too right. I mean, these things are like dry sponges.
They suck water up so quick. How do they do that? Dude?
I mean, what does a does it tell? What does a cactus root
look like compared to like a non cactus root. How do they That needs
more study. In a bunch of cacti, and we don't know how many,
they have a thing called root spurs. And this was discovered in the
nineteen fifties by Norman Boc and published in American journal Body. But with these
have now I'm making a connection exactly so, but yeah, but both found
that on a bunch of the punch is near El Paso, we have these
little knobs on them and just odd little things. And if the roots and
if you connect collected them when they were dry, they just these, you
know, skinny little cactus roots with little knobs bumps all over the place.
And then but then you water them, then just within a matter of an
hour to a new little root comes out, not very long. It only
grows to about a few millimeters, you know, a few fractions of an
inch, and then stops and puts out root hairs everywhere over its surface.
It doesn't have a root cap. It just puts root hairs even over the
tip of itself. And so within a matter of an hour of me these
all these little ns generate new roots within an hour. And they can do
that because they've got all that energy sort of well, well, the root
is basically pre formed and just sitting there is this dry you know, just
to add water, and they puff themselves up and go out into the soil
and start pulling water in and getting it into the body. And then and
then they die. Then those root spurs die, but before they die they
make another little spur root at their base. And so then year after after
year this gradually goes up this little knob that you can see with your naked
eye. Nigel Taylor has just found root spurs on Prescuse. I think and
and sometimes when you're you know, if you're buying a getting cacti from a
nursery in California, it comes through the mail. Then if you unwrap it
and look at the look at the at the roots, they're pretty obvious that
your fresh impression is going to be what the heck is that? And then
if you look at it and think about it, this must be a root
spur, and and so we need to have more people. Just look,
you know, every time they get a they they unpot, their cac die,
or they get a cactus in the male. Just look at the roots
and and and then they should write to you look close, look close at
the fire and understand what's going on. Yeah, And then it could be
that that it could be that these are virtually all cacti. And so whereas
an ordinary plant with the rains, they have to go through all the rigamarole
of producing a regular root as to grow out quieter ways, and they're probably
not used to letting it die, and they're regenerating it. I mean,
this is fucking nuts, man. This is what when you see a plant
sitting in the in the a cactus sitting in this dry, rocky soil,
completely devoid of any moisture whatsoever, right, probably six feet down, ten
feet down, twenty bums a little maybe not even because I guess rains don't
really in most deserts don't run that deep, right, they just run off.
And then you think about this thing. It's just a little battery,
like those roots are not still technically sucking in moisture in that soil, there's
nothing for them to suck in. They're just it just shuts down right,
and then within an immediate response to rain, it's generating nuth tissue. That's
fucking wild. I mean, that's the thing about these plants is like I
never thought i'd get such a for lack of a better word, hard on
for cacti, but but uh, they're just so fascinating. And I think
in the changes our world is going through right now with all the CO two
and all the shit we've been pumping in an atmosphere and how fast climate change
is happening, these plants. I mean, if there's a model plant to
look at for the future for a lot of you know, like they have
nailed it down, man, They've really fucking figured it out. The things
that will survive the climate EXTINCTIONI cockroaches and cacti, fucking gru Sonia. Yeah,
it's not going to be any of the cool ones. It's gonna be
like dog Choya and fucking yeah, a pretty miserable place. So uh,
yes, sorry, but I think what you said is the main thing is
and and it's kind of always amazed me that in my work with cacti,
for so many years is that. You know, cacti are all over the
Western US and New York and Chicago and and all through Latin America and people
haven't paid attention to them for the most part. You know, it's just
like a collector, you mean scientists, right, and and and a lot
of it, a lot of the biology is just a matter of you don't
need to uh to a lot of equipment, You don't need a big lab.
You just need to look at the plant and think, how is this
working, how is this growing? What does it do when it's hot,
what does it do when it's dry, what does it do when it's raining?
That's what And that's what you did razor blades and slides and in a
microscope. Yeah well yeah, And a lot of times you don't even don't
even need the microscope. You can just you can just look at the plant
and think, okay, what's going on? Like like with leaves, so
can't most cactive evolved to to not have big foliage leaves and so they have
a lower surface area. But then you have to ask, well, what's
going to be the what are all the consequences of not having leaves that that
you can't photosynthesize as much. You can't. You can't, you can't wilt,
you can't, you can't lose water, which is good. Another thing
about leaves is that there would unload the asylum. So your your roots when
there's water, your riches taking in this water, putting it into the into
this into the shoot wood, and then the wood takes it up to the
top of the stem. And then how do you get the water out of
that wood? Well, usually you know, if they look at a big
old log, there's almost no surface area, and so to unload water out
of a out of a log is almost impossible. But but the water is
taken up to the top of the shoote or out to the ends of the
branches where there are all these leaves, and the leaves have their little vanes,
their leaf veins and which you're all fine, fine things, have a
high surface area and and so the so the leaves are where the water is
unloaded out of this island. And so when cacti lost their leaves, they
also lost the way of unloading water out of their as island. It's like,
okay, now with you do is there an alternative? Is there another
way of getting water out of the wood roots off. If the run conditions
are not disadvantageous, conditions are good, you can't shut those roots off.
So you've just got to rely on those stomata to let water vapor out.
We pull it up through the xylum even to get the to get the water
from the xylum out to this to the epidermis where the stomata are. That
that you have veins that run from this from the xylum from the wood out
to the leaves. And so when the cact i lost their leaves, they
kept those leaf veins, those veins that they're called leaf traces that run through
the cortex out to the surface. And so so cact i have those leaf
traces that can carry water away from the wood and out into the cortex m
and then in the traces and what are leaf traces exactly there, it's vasculate
shirts. Yeah, basically, yeah, it's just a vascut bundles that that
carry water from the wood out to where a leaf is. And and we
should just call them vascular bundles, but the old term is leaf trace.
And that's just a handy, handy word for saying, Okay, there are
lots and lots of different kind of bundles in plants and leaf facees are a
particular type of bundle that runs from wood out to a leaf and and so
these are good for unloading water out of this island as well. And in
the Cacti cactoidy E subfamily, these have really branched and become very elaborate and
for necessary a series of a big network of vascuar bundles throughout the cortex.
And they're called cortical bundles. Explain that because this is a trademark of cacti.
I mean, there are some other plants get it, but it's especially
cactus thing. And I mean, what what is the cortex and what are
these cortical bundles. They're basically bundles of vasculature that run out to the epidermis
right in almost all when they're not when they're young, and shoots when they're
young, not woody. You can you can make a cross section. You
see this ring of vascular bundles and and all the tissue to the outside of
that is the cortex. And what does it what does it look like when
you see this ring looks like like you basically cut like a fiber rock the
cable kind of or what like a cross section of a fiber out the cable
or what. Well, I don't I don't know what that looks like.
Well, you know, like a like a conduit with a bunch of smaller
tubes inside. Right, So if you take a cross section of stem and
look at it with a with a magnifying glass or loop, then you just
see this little ring of little dots. And each of those dots is the
end of a vascuer bundle. And and so when there's water, it's being
carried up, be carrying carried up through those vascuar bundles through those in that
ring and then diffuses out to the cortex and out to the epidermis, and
andre's lost through the stomata. And this is again, this is the trademark
of cacti. Really will it's is it? When you hear a cortical bundle,
you mostly think of cact They see yeah, yeah, and so if
so the diffusion, So water it gets from from this that central ring of
bundles out to the epidermis by diffusion, just by diffusing from one prankm my
cell to another cell, to another cell to another cell and that's a slow
process. And so and so, if the epidermis is losing water slowly because
because there's not too dry and it's not too hot, then then that slow
movement of water from the central ring of bundles out to the epidermis is even
though it's slow, it's fast enough to keep the epidermist alive and keep the
outer cortex alive. But if you'd evolve to have a thicker cortex so that
the that the epidermis is now farther away from that ring of bundles, then
then there's slow diffuse usion from water from the ring of bundles out to the
epidermis. That the far the the longer that distance, the slower that process
becomes. So if you're in a hot, dry habitat like cactire, then
you're the epidermis is losing water even despite the cuticle and despite all the wax,
it's losing water to the to the air. And if if you can't,
if you cannot get water from those that central ring of bundles out to
the epidermis as fast as the epidermist is losing water, then the epidermist is
going to be water stress and will die when the epidermist dies and your plant
is going to so it's moving water from the center of the stem out to
the right and and so this is why cortical bundles evolved, or this was
well in almost all plants. There's no other mechanism to to move water to
the epidermis except by from one cell to another cell, to another cell to
another cells slow diffusion. And for most plants that doesn't matter because most plants
don't live in deserts and they're not losing water that fast, and the euphobias
they don't have an alternative. So so we often think of euphobias as looking
a lot like cacti, and they and they do, but they're always skinnier
than cacti. You never see you'll never see because they don't have cortical bundles.
Right, you know, this evolution of key of of cortical bundles was
a big fucking deal, the big innovation, a key innovation, what we
call a key innovation. Right, once they evolved cortical bundles, this plumbing
that moves water from the interior of the stem to the epidermis of the stem
can be fast, and it can be fast and it can keep the plant
alive, and now they can start to bulk up and get bigger stems.
And that's why you get you know, pack of Sirius pringly eye with this
giant fucking golden barrel free trunk or golden barrel cacked I or yeah, pack
of serious Webee. They can have eighty stems on it. You know the
candelabra down in Wahakap Puebla. I mean it's yeah, yeah, something like
a something like a golden barrel or a pack of Sarius that even though their
cortexes is really really wide and their epidermis is losing water because the air so
dry, they can get water from that central ring of bundles fast because because
they have vascuar bundles that are running horizontally through the cortex as the system of
cortical bundles. So tell everybody to what cortex. It's just like the outer
part of a stem. But there's not chlorophyll in it? Is there?
It's often beneath you there is, But in normal in like a regular noncatchoid
plant, would there be chlorophyll in the cortex or is that is it more
inwards? No, Usually there's chlorophyll in the cortex. So that's why stems
are green. Okay, okay, so because they have chlorophyll in that.
So the outer part of the stem, just between that, between the epidermis
and the wood or this ring of bascuar bundles, you know, that's the
cortex. It's usually soft, paranchamas, usually juicy. It's an outer layer
of a stem or room. Yeah, yeah, and uh and so in
cacti, that cortex is free to evolve to be very very wide, a
big volume, a huge canstroy a lot of water, more so than you
would find because they can do that like a chestnut or something, right,
because they have these cortical bundles that will carry water keep all those cells alive
by distributing water throughout them. So where is the cortex is kind of is
that the that's the the epicenter of succulents in a cactus stem or where is
it? Yes, in cactia is it's the The second is of cacti almost
always is due to a having the the cortex become really really thick. In
pack a podium, it usually the seconds is usually because the pith becomes very
very thick, and so and what is explained to people what pith is.
So the pith is the very center of the stem when you look at a
if you do take a cross section through a stem, and you see that
circle of of bundles in almost all plants and in cacti, that circle is
going to be pretty narrow, and so there's just a tiny little pith the
center of that is the pith is very narrow. In packa podium, that
that ring of bundles will be pretty wide, and so the pith is very
wide. So there's a pith that has a lot of volume in pack of
podium versus like the cortex in cacti. Right, so the pack of podium
is going to be storing a lot of water in its pith, whereas cacti
and you store the water in the cortex. And so we have these two
different alternatives. Put your water out on the outside of the stem or put
it on the inside of the stem? Which is better? Well? Or
what is the what are the consequences of of of each? If if we've
talked about a punches, will you know shriveling up and and cacti if you
have a really bad drought, you know golden barrels, all kinds of cap
that can shrink and become smaller, and think about when then then when they
get to get water, when it rains again they get a lot of water,
then they can they can absorb that water and expand they've got ribs because
right and so so nothing there's nothing really prevents them from expanding because because that
according according like skin on the ribs is no resistance and well you can't really
do that with pith though, I guess you can't do that with pith because
the pith is surrounded by wood. So if that pith of a of a
pack pony, if that would expand you're run the risk of fracturing your woodrupt
if it expands enough hard enough, it'll rip your wood apart and the plant's
going to fall over and die. So there's much more flexibility and row being
outside in the quarte and literally, yeah, having this gulents in the cortex,
the water stores and the cortex. Right, So okay, so let's
talk about what is I guess just really really quick because there's a bunch of
other stuff I want to cover. So what what is it a cactus stem
like from the outside and you've got pith on the inside. Uh, you've
got it for This is what I want to talk about too. This is
what I forgot when I was filming the uh one of the last videos I
did about the Arizona's only native palm, you know, and I was basically
explaining palms technically aren't trees, they're herbs. They don't really have secondary growth.
They're only growing at the top the cells. But some palms you can
have anomalist secondary growth. Right in monocots, I mean all monocots really,
right, And there's grass at gave Yuccas, palms whatever. None of them
have ordinary wood. None of them have ordinary wood. And we equate wood
basically with with lateral marrit stems with secondary growth. Yeah, a vascular cambium.
So you've got cell division actually cring like on a tree, like on
a chestnut tree or an oak. You've got that outer ring as actually growing.
There's cell division in that cambium, of which is you know, most
people, most people don't able to realize the trees only really alive on the
outer few inches that the inside is technically dead tissue. That's why you can
see trees that have rotted on the inside but are perfectly green. So,
so what's going on with with monocots And then let's move that on to cacti,
Like monocots don't have secondary growth. They know you don't have as a
cambium, correct, so so yeah, so so technically plants are either herbs
or woody plants, and since monocops don't have wood, they're all herbs.
So a palm tree, a giant yuca, joshua trees are all herbs.
Herbs no, no, no wood, no true wood. So we usually
think of herbs as being some soft, little soft little thing. Yeah yeah,
regano and basil and stuff like that, but it but they don't have
to be soft. They can be hard with other fibers, just not wood.
And so you can have tough hard woody romeliads and and hectias and agaves
and stuff like that. So they have no wood, but they're hard and
tough bamboo. They've gotten hardened tissue, right, yeah, they have.
They have a lot of fibers, it's just not wood fibers. It's technically
not wood as wood is defined botanically, right right, So okay, So
in the case of a palm tree, though, like because you know some
palms will I mean, you look at palms, that's why they're the same.
They're a uniform all up and down the quote unquote trunk the stem.
They're a uniform diameter for the most part. But sometimes you do get you
know, anomalist secondary growth or cells that are enlarging. But it's technically it's
not a lateral Marris stem. No, that in palms. When that happens,
it's a it's just kind of a diffuse growth that in palms and in
all monocots. Rather than having one ring of basketar bundles I was talking about,
they have basket bundles, hundreds of bundles scattered throughout the whole cross section
of the stem. And in between each of those bundles are soft prankama cells,
usually perankamum cells, and those can undergo cell division and resume growth,
divide and swell. So yeah, so in in like the bottle palms,
where there in the middle of the palm tree that would be this big,
fat, wide spot. Yeah, it's those cells have just started to just
not at random, but not in a really tight mariistimatic type one single spot,
but throughout the whole diffusely throughout the whole trunk. These prank my cells
are dividing and pushing the bundles apart, and so the thing becomes thicker without
actually having a wood. And so we should mention too that this is if
there's a keyword to take away, it's it's obviously maristem marris stems are points
of active cell division and growth. Right, and there's the most angiosperms and
conifers too. Obviously you've got to two main growing points up at the top,
the distal lens of the shoot tips of however many branches it's got,
and then also the lateral tips well, the root tips and oh and the
root tips right, okay, well, yeah, I'm talking about it.
Let's I guess above ground point we should. We can't forget the roots when
you type, right, But but and then the enlargement of the lateral marrasteme
the secondary then you have that you have that lateral marrow stem, the bascu
cambium that is going to add wood and add to the bark. And but
even in plants that are annuals like tomatoes, they've still got that secondary growing
point. They do. It's just it's just that it's very inactive, doesn't
make very much wood, so you'd never recognize that red is truly would.
And the small globular cacti they make, they are woody plants, but their
wood is so there's such a little bit of wood and it's so soft it
rots right away. But if you if you see it rots right away,
you mean if if the plant dies, Oh yeah, right, very often
a small globe cactus dies. The only thing you find a fuse. You'll
find that the spines a few years later, Michell. Yeah, yeah,
you might find a bit of epidermis, but usually the woods all decayed away.
The cortex the fifth of all decayed away because they're just soft, juicy
cells. So I technically have wood. They've got that lateral America. M
right. It's just very thin and does not much energies put into it.
Not much. Many reasons are putting put in big columnar cacti like pack serious
weber I yea or cephalosisis and things like that. They have a good solid
wood. It's a real ordinary hard wood that you could you can make a
lumber out of. And is that the is that the skeleton that you find
then, yeah, I mean that's like the woody like you see a siguaro
that died and you see you see those vertical woody shoots. That's actually true.
What that's the lateral that's lateral aristomatic tissue. That's Cambium has made that.
Yes, campium has made that. Wow, Okay cool, and so
what like if you see but if you see like a cylinder of punch of
like a choy in the desert that rotted and died, you've got that cross
hatching. Yeah, that still would and and so that wood is what we
call secondary asylum. Okay, So the little vascular bundles in in leaf veins
or the leaf traces or in a young stem, that little circle of bundles,
those are called des islum. And that is called primary asylum because it's
it's formed first, it's and then and then if you have wood, then
that's going to be formed later in addition to that, so that comes second.
So that's secondary asylum. And then something that's a true herb like mono
cots, then they have the primaries item, but they never have a basket
came so that they can never make secondari's items. They never make secondaries,
right, of course, xylum water up, flowing sugars down. For anybody
listening, well, xylum water up, floam sugars anywhere the plant needs them,
right right, yeah, right, yeah, So it more accurate way
to describe what's going on there, right well, it makes it makes the
flow more complicated to study, because with xylums there's always water going up.
Okay, that's it, you got it, this whole thing. But with
floam, so you have a leaf, you have a leaf just below just
below the tip of a shoot, and then the shoot flowers, so that
shoot's gonna need a lot of flour, not of sugar for it. They're
growing apical marasia. At the tip of the shoot is gonna need sugars for
the flour and the fruit. So that leaf sugar are going to be going
upward into the flowers and fruit within the within the flour is done, the
fruit's done, the falls off, so that tip doesn't need so much sugar
anymore. So that leaf, when that starts sending it sugars downward to the
roots, to other storage organs. So so the sugars from a particular leaf
might be going up, might be going down, They might switch, they
might be going down and then and then plant blooms above them, so they'll
switch from conducting they're sending their sugars down. So the more accurate ways to
say that sugars are taking flowing is taking sugars from the factory in the plant
produces the sugars and photosynthesis which would be just the the cells that actually contain
chlorophyll, and then putting them to wherever they're like, making sure they get
where they need to go. And if you've got a storage organ like a
potato tuber or or some of the second roots of cacti or tubers of cacti
that store starch and sugars over the winter or over a dry period and then
that sprout, then then you're conducting sugar all the way from that underground tuber
up into this right back up, so it goes both ways. It's not
it's not like the xylum, which is just simple water from the roots up
right right. Okay, So I wanted to talk about a cephallium too.
The cephallium plural cephalia on plants like melo cactus or disco cactus gets them too,
And then you've got pseudo cephalium as well, on plants like pelosisias or
Cephalos serius. What's going on with these things? And what what are they?
Okay, this cephalia, as far as I can tell, are uniquely
are unique to cacti. No other plants at all have anything like a cephallium,
a cephalium. For people who know melo cactus, hopefully cactus with a
fez. It's got a little red, little fuzzy, this weird structure.
It's just often just red and covered a tricombe. And a lot of people
often think that it's two different plants grafted together, right, But what it
is is that in these in almost all plants go through a juvenile phase when
they can't flower. Okay, so you plant an apple seed, you're not
going to get apples next year. It's going to have to grow for four
or five or six years before you get your first flowers and first fruits.
And cat i do the same thing. Man, most cacti, most plants
that when they finally are able to flower, when they're old enough to flower,
then the body that they're producing is the same. It looks the same.
The leaves. When that apple tree is finding old enough to flower,
the leaves that's making dan. We'll just look like the leaves are made in
his first year. You'll have the same characteristics, same type of wood,
same type of epidermis. You can't really tell any difference except that one flower
and one can't. And the same happens in most cacti that that young cacti
cannot flower. But when they finally do become old enough to flower, there's
no obvious change. They just they's just oh, there's flowers. But in
the ones that produces cephallium, when they become old enough to flower, the
new growth, their new growth is totally different from the old growth. So
in a mellow cactus. So for people who don't know what mellow cactus is,
doogle, do Google search on an image, otherwise this will make no
sense. Genus in Brazil, the Caribbean, Caribbean, Yeah, Mexico.
It grows as a little ball cacti, cactus, uh spines, ribs,
nothing at all unusual about it. But you'll just when I was shown,
you'll just never see a flower. And then at some age, maybe five
years, ten years, fifteen years, that the spines will be it will
start making spines out of shorter and there and the stem is much narrower.
So so instead of being uh say six or seven and eight inches wide,
it's not only two inches wide. And the spines are packed together, really
really tidy together. And that's because the aerials, the spine clusters are not
are not like an inch or to a part like they are on the on
the young body. And so areoles we should mention too for anyone listening.
Areoals are of course where the clusters, the spine clusters right where flowers,
and they're technically like leaf buds, right, yeah, they're yeah, they're
they're buds. It's a point of growth, yeah, yeah. And and
so so what's happened is this mele cacs when it starts making these short spines
and this narrower stem, that is not a flower, and it's not an
inflorescence. It is its adult body. And that adult body now is able
to breathe flowers. So from that part of the stem you will see flowers
emerge and then melts the cephalium oftentimes does it Does it produce chlorophyll? No?
No, chlorophyll no. Because the spines are so tightly packed together,
probably virtually no light is getting through them down into the into the stem tissue.
So this is the growth pace of the plant that's primarily just for producing
flowers for reproduction. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and so in the
sense these cacti are growing by just one single shoot apex, then then this
can can continue to grow. So year after year, your mellow cactus will
get older and older and older, and the cephalium will get longer and longer
and longer. But that green, round, juvenile body at the bottom of
the plant can't make any it's not growing any further. It's not going to
grow anymore. That's that's the it's going to be for the rest of it.
So that is the plant's photosynthetic body is where I can do its photosynthesis.
And so that's not getting any bigger, and it's getting older and older
and older. Probably chloroplas are wearing out, breaking down, and so so
a whole bunch of things with this. We see this juvenile adult transition in
ourselves. So at you know, at five years old, we can't reproduce,
and when we go through puberty, our body, our body rearranges itself
a little bit. So you know, men start growing more hair and beards
and stuff like that. Women the breasts develop, so we're rearranged. We're
not getting a whole new body, we're just rearranging some of the tissues and
the old body. But that new adult body, you can't confuse that with
a juvenile body, but very different characteristics and the adult body can reproduce and
in more striking examples in caterpillars and butterflies. So the caterpillars is it's just
feeding and growing body that can eat and grow and get bigger, and then
it metamorphoses into a butterfly, but it doesn't have any This caterpillar doesn't have
any sex organs, and so when metamorphoses into a butterfly, then it does
get sex organs. And in mayflies, it doesn't have any digestive system it
so the adult mayfly can't eat at all, and it's just I'm going to
live for a day, similar to a cephilium not being able to photosynthesize.
So and I assume there's a biochemical response in these two different growth phases of
plants like melocacti melocactus and disco cactus as well too. It's just a total
different set of hormones. Probably so and and so and so so so it's
so once the plant switches over to making a cephalium, and since the cethellium
is at the tip of the plant, it's called the terminal cephalium, and
so the plant can no longer make any new green photosynthetic tissue, so it's
photosynthetic capacity is set. But there's but as long as that green base is
healthy, then the cephalium can just keep on growing longer and longer and longer,
making more and more flowers, more and more fruits. Everything you see
me cactus that have huge h really long So what are the what are the
you know, ecological and evolutionary advantages of this structure. Well, it's there's
a lot of a lot of consequences. So the cephalium, the spines are
so tightly to pack together that as a flower bud is developing, and it
usually takes a long time for a flower bud to develop, there's a lot
of changes have to go on. And that those stages are all rich in
protein and rich in sugars. They're good food for anything that would want to
combine and eat it, whether it's but seems now these little flowers are protected
in this massive spines. This massive set of spines is covering them. And
the flower beds are down at the base of the spine, so there's no
way that an insect can get down and attack that flower bud. So these
are much more protected than the flower beds on it's on a prickly pear or
mammalaria or anything like that. And then when the flower buds ready to open,
it just you know, just like most of ours, overnight, it
just elongates long gates and the flowers get just exactly long. Your meloic acts
get just exactly long enough that the petals come up and then spread out over
the surface of the spines. And so the nectaries for the instant, for
the pinators the next us are down at the base of this pedal line tube,
so a ponator can come and can stick us for bosses down there and
get the nectar without worrying about getting stuck on a spine because you've got this
soft pedal line tube. And then when it's just closed up, and then
the fruit is protected too, right, and they developed food is protected until
until it's ready, and then on the seas are mature, then it again
overnight and just so you look at the plant one evening, nothing the next
morning, and then the big pink fruits have all popped out overnight, and
they pop out again to where they're taller than the spine. So a bird
that wants to eat them, a bird can come along and get them without
worrying about getting pecked by getting hurt by the spines. And yeah, so
it's it really is a The famium is a wonderful way of protecting your flowers
and protecting your fruits. And another aspect is that on a regular cactus,
the flowers always come from a spine cluster, from an areoal from an area
they can only they're not going to produce flowers from in between areoles or anywhere
else, only from an areo. Yeah, and so so if an ordinary
cactus wants to make one more flower, it has to make a whole areole
and all the tissue that's involved in it. So you have something like it's
got to produce more stem and the usually that's a there's a big investment,
right and so but with the with the planks of the cephalium, the stem
is narrow, all the areals are close together, they're packed together, so
making so these two have to make more stem for each new flower, but
it's not very much stem, and it's cheaper to make, and there's less
machinery since it's just those machinery involves, since it's just the organs just for
reproduction, you know, you're not producing all this chlorophyll and other things in
there. It's right, and it's just the flower. But first square millimeter
or centimeter or whatever, there's way more aerials packed in, right, So
it's square milli a square centimeter of cephalium stem than that. Yeah, you
know. So, so for all the physiologists plant physiologists listening to this,
what would be interesting to know is back down in the bottom of this juvenile
body, that's now how you do the photosynthesis for this whole cephalium that's getting
longer and longer and longer. So we know that the plant cannot make any
more new cells down there, but we don't know what's happening with the chloroplast
that maybe the chloroplas are wearing out and so the photosynthetic capacity is going down,
or maybe those old cells are making new chloroplasts, so that even though
this juvenile body is twenty or thirty years old, with cells that are twenty
or thirty years old, maybe their chloroplus are brand new every year, or
whether they're just constantly making new chloroplus. That'd be the thing to figure out.
If they're producing no newloroplastic, they're relying on the same old machinery until
it wears out, so u and then so so these This is a terminus
ephalium on mellow cactus and disco cactus and and Bacabergia militaris, but in things
like Pilossius and my Krantho serious and a bunch of the Brazilian columnar Cactius Toopho
serious columnar tree that's got that weird you know, on the sun side of
the plant or the flowering side, it produces all those hairs. What would
you call that ethnically? That's still so now let's just let's just talk about
its right now, okay, So onus what these will do instead of instead
of when they finally get old enough to flower but form their adult form,
they don't make it on the whole all the way around. They just make
it on one side. So one side of the stem becomes the new growth
of one side of the stem becomes hairy, has different kinds of spines and
can flower, but all the other the other three sides of the stem are
still making juvenile tissues with their green photosesthetic ordinary spines. So these shoot aprical
mara stems in parlosissies are making both adult tissue and juvenile tissue simultaneously, and
the flowers will only emerge from that lateral row of tricombes and spines that is
the lateral cephalium. So it so it's not the pseudosphilium really, it's more
like a lateral actual we'll get to that. Okay, this is on that
to be clear, there's on the the away from the sun's side. No,
no, that's not it. The So imagine that when back when you
were ten twelve and you're waiting to have puberty. You want to be able
to shave or your first training bra or whatever, and then you go through
puberty, but it doesn't affect your whole body. It just affects one strip
of your body. So one strip of your body grows beard or becomes muscular,
but all the rest of your body just stays, you know, like
a ten year old. That's what pilosisius is doing. It is growing as
both a juvenile and adult simultaneously, which is no, there's nothing else that
has biology like that. This is really strange now about whether pseudosphallium are a
true and so since these are on the side of a plant, these are
lateral cephalia, But why on the side. That's the thing is what's the
benefit here? What happens in these Yes, these are most of these plants
are branch highly branched plants. And and what will happen if you look at
a plant in nature, then a branch comes up out from the base and
it grows slightly horizontally and then turns upward. And so at where it's turning
upward, you have an outer part of the curved and you have an inner
part of the curve. If you follow that outer part of the curve,
that is where the cephalion, the latter of cephalian, will form on that
not where it's curving, but where it's finding. It's been straight it's been
growing straight up for years. But on the side that if you follow straight
down, is where that curve, that outside of the curve, that's where
the lotter offalian will form, and that will put the cephalia on the flowers
facing out from the plant. So you've got this. This cactus has lots
of branches and lots of spines and bat pollinated flowers, and bats are not
going to fly through all that crap. So it has nothing to do with
the sun. No, it's to get the flowers pointing out where a bat
can fly up, feed on that flower, and fly away without ever getting
stuck in all those spines. You know what I was thinking. I was
thinking of low serious Columna trahani. When you see them on the like Pueblo
a Hakka border, they bend. I think it's they bend away from the
sun or toward I forget I did a video on it, but they all
bend a little bit towards the top, and that I think is to keep
the flowers out of the the hot sun, because I think they're diurnally pollinated.
I have to check. But this is it was something different than we
were talking about. So what species of pelosa serious? Like are you referring
to when you mentioned this, like a bad pollinated pelosa? Serious? This
is in Mexico or oh I guess yeah, as I most have seen latter
Cephalian Peru and stuff like that. Okay, but either way, it's it's
for pollinator accessibility. Yeah, yeah, Now about a true latter of cephalium
and a pseudo cephallium. Well wait, wait really quick, hold on,
So the letter of cephalium though again it's producing flowers only on one side,
right, and it's and then all this other material that's created too. Is
that just to protect the flowers from drying out, is it? Yes?
So that so that's aphallium. The flowers again coming out from the cephalium where
the spines are packed together, lots and lots of tri comes, lots and
lots of hairs, so that again nothing can get at those at those flower
buds as they're developing, and ours the fruits as they're developing. Right,
and some like my mi Grantha serious as hummingbird pollinated in many of them,
things like or I think it was oreosurious that we saw in Brazil. But
yes, same thing that all that tissue, all those that extra tricombs and
spines is basically a nest for the flowers, yes, right, and then
the flowers along gate when they're ready. Yeah yeah, yeah, no,
it's if you take if you take some of these with latterphalia and you you
cut that come across. So so for those of you who mostly have cacti
that are in pots at home and you probably loath to cut them. But
if you're on the field, bring a big knife and cut things open and
take a look at what's going on that that if you cut some of them
open, and and in a lot of the pilosas areas with the latteral cephallium,
all those hairs are coming from the very surface of the stem. That
the stem is still pretty circular in cross section, and that's gonna be uh,
that's gonna be a pseudo cephallium in otherwise, you cut that across,
you cut the stem across, and where this fallium is is a big notch
where where the stem hasn't gotten really wide. That you know, the whole
stem is starting off as this microscopic little point and then normally has to grow
two or three inches wide on each side, except where the safalium is going
to form. There it just grows maybe a quarter of an inch half an
inch thick. So the lateralphellium you see that notch, you can see it's
actually that's it's being degenerated from deep in the deep inside, so it's being
protected on both sides by ordinary stem, and so you have this deep groove
and the spines and the tri combs and everything. The hairs are being produced
to the base of that groove, and the flowers and the fruits too.
So that's going to be a true lateral cephalium. And that hasn't been examined
very careful. Nobody's sat down and said, okay, well, which plants
have that deep groove and which plants don't, So that needs to be examined.
It's really fascinating stuff. You know. What I've noticed too, in
a lot of the South American conact that like brown Ninia, like the columbnar
ones, and even in Tricho serius out of comments, out of commences,
is that they have two different spines. They have dimorphixed spines. The ones
lowered down are more for defense, more armored, and then above a certain
height they turn more and to tricombs, more sun protection, which I thought
was really why, or they just disappear entirely, like Broninia loses spines above
nine feet. I mean that's obviously you know, program for don't don't put
all the resources into producing this material if you don't need any I mean,
herbivores can't whatever herb wars. These things evolved with probably these weird camelid things,
these out packets or whatever, couldn't reach above nine feet anyway. Yeah,
so that's why they just yeah, so again for people who don't know
broningia, look look that up. Look up picture of it. Hands.
Yeah. Really, it grows as a It grows as a single columnar shoot
that is ferociously covered spines. Some of those spines are like a foot long.
Yeah, to make the longest, the longest spines in the family.
And it's and you can't you can't get close to the stem. But then
at about six or eight or nine feet they just stopped making spines. And
my my guess is that that's the point, which yeah, yeah, can
serve a lot of energy. Yeah, wors can't can't get above that and
so and that. And then also at that point is when they start branching
so and so, and the branches don't have they have fine spines, little
tiny fine spines, so you can't really handle them with your bare hands easily.
God, some of those some of those plants though, just I mean,
these these I wonder how along those things, I wonder how old some
of those plants are that you see, and this is like eight thousand feet
in the end. He's like below that. It's so dry that it's just
not there's at one level where the fog comes right. The fog is just
right. If you're standing there, you can look you can look down the
mountain and you can see this this one band of Browningia candelarus. But they
but some of them look like eric carriers, like monkey puzzle trees almost,
you know, like they've got like that mushroom, look like it's a stem
and it's a trunk and it goes up to like ten fifteen feet and then
they start branching and some of these branches are hanging down. Yeah, just
really bizarre cool plant a really really cool and it's not none the trade at
all. I've tried to buy seeds and the seeds never germinate. Uh huh.
Nobody ever has plants to sell. They've probably got a really weird Those
seeds are probably really long lived too, and probably have some really bizarre dormancy.
Could be thing going on. God, it's it's the habitat as wild.
So speaking of South American cact that I want to talk about Blusspheldia too,
because this is a really remarkable one. And it's kind of you were
saying that I think there was a I didn't read this paper, but there
was a phylogeny that showed that it was sister it was in cactoidy, or
it was sister to kactoid So some people would put it in its own subfamily,
the blusspheilim And this is a plant that grows in the Andes and is
very small. You see them here as grafts because they're probably really hard to
grow on their own roots in North America lower elevations. And this is like
a it's a ten of the a resurrection plant, right, it's poikilo hydric.
It can completely dry out, yes, and they grow in these rock
cracks and then but then they can swell up after a rain and just become
what's going on with Blusphelia so blusphilia. Those when when the plants are fully
mature, they are the smallest cacti of all. They have the smallest bodies
when the as a mature plant. And but the size of your little finger,
A giant Blussphilda would be the size of your thumb, and very very
thin epidermis, and and the ability to store water and to lose water related
to your geometry. So the ability to store water is related to the to
the volume of the plant body, so this radius cube and the ability to
lose water is to the the surface area the radius squared. So if if
if you just have a ball shaped body, and like blusphilies are ball shaped,
if you just be bigger and bigger and bigger, your surface to volume
ratio is better for conserving water. So so even though the blost philiy is
a perfect sphere, and I say a golden barrel is a perfect sphere,
you might think they have the same surface to volume ratio, but they don't
simply because the golden barrel is bigger, it has a lower surface relative to
its volume than a blossphilia. So a bloss phailia is really have very little
chance of conserving water. That that they lose water and and and when they
lose water, they dry out. And their their adaptation is that they can
their protoplasm can become extremely dry without dying. And and then so you can
you can find a blosphility and habitat where it just looks like it looks like
it's dead. It looks like it's terrible. It's all shrivel and there's nothing
to it. And then you water and it pops back up, and so
so you call it poison kilohydrate, which is really unique. I mean,
lots of ferns, so Laginella's can do this, but it's really unique among
angiosperms. I know that there's that relative of Gunnera that can do a miural
feminists, which I saw. And then maybe you know these plants that look
completely dry and then you put them in a glass of water and then you
can cut a shot put in a glass of water. Within a few hours,
it greens up and it's turgid. Yeah, yeah, And it's the
amazing thing is these are green and photos they're green throughout the whole process.
When they're dry, they can't photosynthesize, but then within just hours of rehydrating
there they can photosynthesize and grow and they're perfectly healthy. It's seeds do this
all the time. Of course, So seeds dry out to the find where
you think they look completely lifeless. Then you give them some water. Now
they don't rehydrate quickly like like Glastphilda or or resurrection plants. So it's going
to take a seed two or three days to absorb water and get its active
again fine to making full of chlorophyllin and growing, whereas these resurrection plans do
it much more quickly. But but yeah, Bluss failed you, and I
don't know of any other cactus that does this where they can dry out so
completely as blussphilias do. It's so so when you saw these things, where
was that and what was the altitude? What was the habitat? Like in
one habitat is they're both. I saw them in Argentina both times. And
you're always near water. You should be able to see water from where you
see the now. I don't mean like apond, like the next foot over
a few feet away from you, like there's a river within a half a
mile or something like that. And I have no idea if that's crucial,
But that's what Robert's kind of gives an indication of the rainfall they get.
Well, ROBERTA. Keason mentioned this to me, that you'll always have water,
a big bunch of water somewhere nearby. Now, one point is this
giant river where the rainfall for that river was someplace hundreds of miles away.
And and with this bluss fheldy was was just this bare rock face cracks in
a bare rock base set that had nothing else on them. Nothing was growing
there. Don't you never really see it growing? No, not in soil,
never rock cracks and rocks. And the second time was in an area
where this big rock face was covered with light lichens and mosses and stuff like
that, and the and the bluss fieldy was growing in those. I think
they were acting as a little kind of root rooting medium for the blossfield Those
are big and fat, big and fat, you know the size of my
thumb. Yeah, yeah, you see that a lot with with various cacti
like growing and like as tiki and which I want to talk about too before
we dip out, is you'll see that it growsing on these vertical rock walls
that are just covered in god knows how many species alike in an algae,
you know, cyanobacteria, different fungi, bryophytes. There's tons of Selaginella there
as well, you know, like I said, mosses, bryophytes, that
kind of thing. I mean, it's provides a net like kind of a
nesting medium for the seedlings. Really remarkable stuff. So this is and so
what what does blossopheil do You not have physiologically and anatomically that differs it,
that makes it, you know, because it's not just molecularly. That is
kind of the hint that this is sister to the rest of the cactoidy subfamily.
There's there's other anatomical markers as well. Right, Yeah, I've looked
at I've looked at one anatomically and I couldn't find anything in it that I
thought was a set of cortical bundles. And that's really strange because all the
all other cactivities that that that I've ever looked at, no question to have
cortical bundles that help keep this big thing cortical bundles, or is that they
don't, but they have something similar that that in that if you look at
say especially a flat prickly pair of cactus, right after it's died and the
cortex is rough about the wood is still there, then in that diamond shaped
pattern, you'll see a fine chickenum of of of bundles of vasculature. You
see some plumbing in there, plumbing and they don't, but it doesn't go
out towards that the epidermis. It just stays there within that wood, within
that cross hatched wood skeleton. So it doesn't really let the the puntioids become
have a really thick right cotext you never see like a barrel like barrel like
pair. They can only get they're kind of stretched or they're stuck in how
thick they can get. The big diamond shaped spaces in this skeleton are not
devoid of basket. Sure they have that. They can be have water and
sugars conductive. But the butto punches can generally only let their cortex get so
thick. They can only let the epidermis get so far away from that woody
skeleton where the plumbing is right. So if just some of those some of
those bundles would just turn and go out towards the cortex, that would change,
if that'd be a key innovation for them, that would be that would
be punches independently evolving cortical bundles. But cortical bundles are they're cactoidy specifically exactly
subfamily and apparently not in blasphilia. But but I want to check that again.
Has anyone else looked at that? I mean, it's I find a
remarkable that you're the only one that's looked at Blussphelia to see if there's cortical
bundles in there. Not many people do cactus anatomy. Yeah, more people
got to study this. They're so fascinating. Man. And like I said,
the world we're headed towards, they're gonna be yet, how everyone's gonna
be eaten? Prickly pair of fruit in the Polly's Man, it's about Cephali.
One thing about Cephali before we go is the back of Burgian militaries in
Mexico. There's a giant columnar cacti, yeah, branch, Like I'm gonna
pull this up right now. I'm looking at it. That that branch and
they become like twelve to fifteen feet tall before they're old enough to make their
first flowers, and they make a terminal cephalium and it is a huge sphlium.
It's like, oh my god, it looks like one it looks like
a microphone. It looks like one of those you know boom microphones they use
on a fucking and it's they're about three three or four feet tall. They're
about three or four feet tall, and that is the weirdest. You know,
I've heard of this before, but I've never looked at this speed.
Where does it grow Western Mexico near the Pacific Ocean, Jesus Christ, And
you go out to a population there and the ground is covered with fallen cephalia.
So apparently what they do is a sapallium is about three or four feet
long and has been flowering for years. I guess they form an absissions on
across the green part of the stem just below the the cephalium, and they
size the cephalium and about a foot of green tissue and then then on the
living part of the plant that you know, the cutting off their tip.
It causes two or three new buds to grow out, god damn and make
new branches and have more cephalia which will have size. So they they cut
off their own cephalia when it gets into Wow. Yeah, so that so
the the wood of that I don't know what the wood of the saphalium is
like, but that needs to be studied, so it would be. These
are so fucking weird looking. They're so cool, man. There's so you
know, like a pacaperious peck than aborigine in Baja. I think maybe you
get in Sonora too. I don't know, but that's got a really weird
thing going on to you know, it gets those fruits that are just covered
and I think it's the whole I have to look. Look, I haven't
seen it, I sud in person lasts like seven years ago. But that's
another weird one that's got something that you know, it's basically using spines and
tricombs. There's like a windbreak and to increase humidity and protect a fact.
Then weird name amber Ridge aborigines comb. Yeah, it's got I guess it's
just the fruits, but it's a really bizarre work can happen. I mean
it's these little fuzzy balls on the the end of those Yeah. I guess
it's just the fruit then, but God, anyway, have you you've seen
Backbergia before? Yes, And a friend of mine in Mexico City, doctor
Teresa Trosis, took me to a couple of habitats and one was out in
a kind of a flat bottom land, rich soil, big forest of these
plants. And then the other, so I thought she took me to was
right on the coast where was that car limestone? Where the limestone that just
where this war it's just like razor sharp yeah cars. Yeah, So they
were going, they were growing in that, and we were crazy enough to
walk out into that. Fortunately we didn't fall and didn't cut ourselves to shreds.
Yeah, but the cacta would periodically fall over, and of course when
they fall on that course, it would just cut them, to cut them
to pieces, and then they would root and then send up new buds.
Wow. So they had a lot of vegetables. They just kept going.
Yeah, they were just yeah, but they and they had cephalia. Is
that a high rainfall environment in summer? I know it's dry in winter,
but does it get a decent now? I don't know. God, man,
it's so such a weird but you should definitely see that the back of
burger. Yeah, military is so amazing. There's so many weird and unknown
cacti in Mexico, like columnar cacti, like the like really large like Isolato.
Serious, not many people know about that one. That's a weird one.
So all right, well, Jim, thank you so much for being
down in this legit invitation. I appreciate it, man, I really appreciate
it, and I had fun. I didn't even ask you, but I
wanted to get, you know, talking about some of this stuff we saw
yesterday, the astrophied on the Lafa for a habitat all the time. Yeah,
next time, next time. Cool, all right, thanks so much,
man, appreciate it. Right, everybody else, have a good rest,
and they go fix upke