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A short Palawan Interlude
The island of Palawan is a tropical paradise that lies between the Philippines and Malaysia. It is a large tourist destination, but one that has maintained its natural beauty even with the onslaught of tourists. The flight from Manila was a short 1.5 hour hop, but it was interesting because we went via a propeller…
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Breaking the Blockade
I’ve been doing a long running observation on a stand of Imperata cylindrica (Cogon grass) in Florida since 2021, with the cogon grass rapidly overwhelming its competitors as it spread laterally along a roadside. For a history of this series of observations (oldest to most recent): April 2021Rapid expansion of an invasive grass as viewed…
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Biological Nitrogen-Fixation in Grasses!
Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants. But while the element makes up 78% of the atmosphere as diNitrogen (N2), this form is unavailable to plants. The solution to this problem is nitrogen fixation, which involves the conversion of this atmospheric nitrogen into forms such as ammonia (NH3) that are available and useful to organisms.…
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Admiration for an invasive plant
In the ecological sciences, the worst adjective that can be attached to a plant species is the term “invasive”. In fact, I’ve even heard some people call these plants “evil”, and the hatred directed at them is sometimes all out of proportion to their effect on the environment. The reality of course is that there…
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Ancient Grasslands and Grass Evolution in Paleontological Podcasts
During the pandemic, one of the best things I liked doing was walking around the neighborhood and listening to podcasts. In terms of botanical topics there was nothing even remotely close to In Defense of Plants, but I also followed some paleontological podcasts like Palaeocast, and especially enjoyed topics like the Eurypterids and Trilobites. Later,…
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Will the grass family go extinct?
The Poaceae have existed on earth for about a hundred million years. In phylogeny, the stem age of a clade refers to the time when a group first splits from its sister lineage, and thus is considered the origin point of that group. In the case of grasses, one paper posits that this would have…
Sejarah Poaceae (Volume 2)
The Story of Grasses – Grasslands and Grassy Open Ecosystems