Category: Flora

Posted on

Pando-The World’s Largest Organism

Within the Pando Clone
Fishlake National Forest, Utah
Courtesy & Copyright 2010 Ron Ryel
Utah State University

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

What we consider to be the world’s largest organism has changed over time. At one point, the largest animal crown went to a 150 ton female blue whale. And General Sherman, a 275 foot tall Giant Sequoia was the largest plant.

In 1992, scientists discovered a fungus in northern Michigan and proclaimed it to be the world’s largest organism. Not nearly as visually stunning as a Giant Sequoia, this type of fungus is a filagree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore. Over time it had grown to cover 37 acres, most of this below ground. Subsequent mushroom hunts uncovered even larger specimens elsewhere.

Stretching over 1,600 miles and visible from space, I often hear the Great Barrier Reef called the world’s largest organism. But the reef is not a single organism. It is created from the limestone secretions of a great number of different reef-producing coral species.

Fungi, reefs and giant trees are all very worthy biological wonders, but the thing that gets my largest organism vote is right here in Utah. Like the Great Barrier Reef, it’s so vast you really need to see it from a plane or even satellite. Like General Sherman, it has its own name—Pando—-meaning “I spread” in Latin. Pando can be seen is spreading itself in Fishlake National Forest in south central Utah. So what is Pando? And why is it so remarkable?

Pando is a clonal aspen colony. Each “tree” that we see in an aspen forest is not an individual tree at all but a genetically identical stem connected underground to its parent clone. More trees arise from lateral roots, creating a group of genetically identical trees. But, biologically speaking, the colony is just one individual plant.

Recent genetic testing by Dr. Karen Mock of Utah State University confirms Pando’s enormous size- it covers over 106 acres and contains around 47,000 aboveground stems or suckers. When you consider the volume represented by the trees and root system, Pando easily wins the title of world’s largest organism. So far anyway.

Thanks to Dr. Karen Mock of Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources for her help in developing this piece.
For pictures and sources of the remarkable Pando, see www.wildaboututah.org

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:
Photo: Courtesy & Copyright 2010 Ron Ryel, Utah State University
Text: Stokes Nature Center: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

WESTERN ASPEN ALLIANCE is a joint venture between Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources and the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, whose purpose is to facilitate and coordinate research issues related to quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) communities of the west. https://www.western-aspen-alliance.org/

American Cetatcean Society. Fact Sheet on the Blue Whale. https://www.acsonline.org [Accessed September 2, 2010]

DeWoody J, Rowe C, Hipkins VD, Mock KE (2008) Pando lives: molecular genetic evidence of a giant aspen clone in central Utah. Western North American Naturalist 68(4), pp. 493–497. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/aspen_bib/3164

Grant, M., J.B. Mitton, AND Y.B. Linhart. 1992. Even larger organisms. Nature 360:216. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v360/n6401/abs/360216a0.html AND https://doi.org/10.1038/360216a0

Grant, M. 1993. The trembling giant. Discover 14:83–88. Abstract:https://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3398/1527-0904-68.4.493

Habeck, R. J. 1992. Sequoiadendron giganteum. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [Accessed September 2, 2010].

Mock, K.E., C . A. Rowe, M. B. Hooten, J. DeWoody and V. D. Hipkins. Clonal dynamics in western North American aspen (Populus tremuloides) Molecular Ecology (2008) 17, 4827–4844 https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/wild_facpub/163/

Volk, T. J. 2002. The Humongous Fungus–Ten Years Later. Inoculum 53(2): 4-8. https://msafungi.org/wp-content/uploads/Inoculum/53(2).pdf

The Associated Press, Study finds huge aspen grove continues to decline, The Salt Lake Tribune, Oct 22, 2018,
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/10/22/study-finds-huge-aspen/

Davis, Nicola, Sound artist eavesdrops on what is thought to be world’s heaviest organism, The Guardian, May 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/10/sound-artist-eavesdrops-on-what-is-thought-to-be-worlds-heaviest-organism-pando-utah

The Sweet Song Of The Largest Tree On Earth, Science Friday, National Public Radio, May 12, 2023, https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/listen-to-the-pando-largest-tree/

Posted on

Dodders Not Daughters

Dodder in the Mojave Desert
Courtesy & Copyright Jim Cane

Do not mistake dodders for daughters. Parents appreciate a daughter’s hug, but no plant welcomes the embrace of dodder. Dodders are relatives of morning glories and bindweeds. Imagine the despised bindweed minus its leaves and green chlorophyll, just a snarl of twining vine looking like orange spaghetti, and you have a picture of dodder.

Dodders gave up chlorophyll for a parasitic habit. The stem of the seedling dodder actively circles about daily, seeking the scent of a host plant like some botanical bloodhound. It then grows toward its host plant, clambers aboard, and soon abandons its tiny roots altogether.

Bumps along the dodder’s orange stem become haustoria. These organs penetrate the host plant to tap into its phloem. The dodder vine grows prolifically with this pirated flow of sap, smothering the original host and spreading to others. Agriculturally, only the imported alfalfa dodder was a problem, but today we can mechanically separate dodder seeds from alfalfa seeds and so avoid inoculating fields with this parasite.

Dodder in the Mojave Desert
Courtesy & Copyright 2010 Jim Cane

Utah’s six native dodders attack a range of wild hosts, most commonly relatives of sunflowers. Other kinds of parasitic plants found in Utah include mistletoes, coral roots, broomrapes and the showy Indian paintbrushes. Other than the mistletoes, these are all root parasites. For some, the parasitic habit is merely optional, but for dodder, it is a way of life.

Dodder could be the basis of a botanical horror movie, but fortunately, infestations of dodder are uncommon and ephemeral in the wild, far more benign than some of the diseases and foreign weeds that disrupt our native plant communities.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.
Credits:

Dodder on Field Bindweed, Payson, UT
Courtesy & Copyright 2010 L. Bingham

Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Jim Cane
Courtesy & Copyright 2010 Lyle Bingham
Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

Pest Notes: Dodder, Pests in Gardens and Landscapes, University of California, UC ANR Publication 7496 https://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7496.html

Integrated pest management for alfalfa hay By University of California Integrated Pest Management Program, ANR Publications, 1981 – Technology & Engineering,
https://books.google.com/books?id=l7e5RvSPhkkC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=dodder+#

Pests of landscape trees and shrubs: an integrated pest management guide ,Steve H. Dreistadt, Jack Kelly Clark, ANR Publications, 2004 – Gardening,
https://books.google.com/books?id=NEOLaUHPVdwC&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=dodder

Posted on

Utah’s Recent Pinyon Migrations and the Prospects for Climate Change

Utah’s Recent Pinyon Migrations and the Prospects for Climate Change
Packrat Fossil Midden
City of Rocks
Copyright © 2009 Julio Betancourt

In the late 1970’s, springtime in the American West warmed abruptly by 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the valleys, double that higher up. Our average onset of Spring now comes a week earlier across the West. If these are the first signs of climate change, even longer growing seasons will trigger not just earlier blooms but also northward plant migrations.

The past provides us with lessons about plant migrations. A thousand years ago, one-needle pinyon hopped from the Raft River Mountains in Utah to City of Rocks, Idaho. Across Utah, two-needle pinyon leaped over the Uintas to Flaming Gorge. We know this from radiocarbon dates on pinyon pine needles taken from ancient nest heaps of packrats preserved in caves. According to Dr. Julio Betancourt of the U.S. Geological Survey, who uses these packrat middens and tree rings to reveal past plant migrations, these recent advances by Utah’s two pinyon pines followed the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a period from 900 to 1300 AD marked by warming in Europe and severe drought in Utah.

Utah’s Recent Pinyon Migrations and the Prospects for Climate Change
Packrat 7000 year old Midden
Joshua Tree Natl Park
Copyright © 2009 Julio Betancourt

Droughts figure prominently in Dr. Betancourt’s view of tree migrations. Droughts trigger bark beetle infestations, wildfires, and tree dieoffs, opening up niches for regeneration. When the drought abates, the resident tree species typically return. With long-term warming, however, other species can move in from lower elevations or further south. Dead trees now abound on Utah’s landscape, and Dr. Betancourt thinks that we are on the verge of a new spate of tree migrations.

This go around, which species retreat or advance will depend on new factors, including human fragmentation of the landscape and accelerated dispersal of native and non-native species that hitch rides with us. To conserve ecological goods and services associated with some species, Dr. Betancourt argues, we will have to manage for these plant migrations.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Photo: Courtesy and © Copyright 2009 Julio Betancourt

Text: Julio Betancourt USGS NRP Tucson: Biotic Response to Climate Variability
Faculty and Staff > Julio Betancourt

Additional Reading:

USGS National Research Program: Tucson AZ
https://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/home.html

Climate Change and the Great Basin, Jeanne C. Chambers, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Reno, NV, 2008,

A Database of Paleoecological Records from Neotoma Middens in Western North America, USGS/NOAA North American Packrat Midden Database, https://esp.cr.usgs.gov/data/midden/ (Accessed 27 August 2009)

Posted on

Carnivorous Plants in Utah

Carnivorous Plants in Utah: Common Bladderwort Courtesy US Forest Service, Barry Rice Photographer
Common bladderwort
(Utricularia macrorhiza)
Courtesy US Forest Service
Photographer: Barry Rice

Bladders that trap prey for Utricularia macrorhiza, Courtesy US Forest Service, Barry Rice Photographer Bladders that trap prey for Bladderwort
(Utricularia macrorhiza)
Courtesy US Forest Service
Photographer: Barry Rice

Carnivorous plants stoke the imagination and spawn Hollywood films. They have bizarre adaptations to aid in the absorption of nitrogen in the nutrient poor environments in which they live. Venus Fly Traps are perhaps the most famous, their moving lobes snapping shut like a purse around the insect prey to be digested. The far more numerous Pitcher plants produce a simple pit trap. Butterworts and sundews both deploy sticky hairs to ensnare prey. There are other carnivorous plant types, but here in Utah we have only 3 species of Bladderworts in the genus Utricularia.

Our three species are denizens of the water, and as such are scattered among the ponds, lakes and sluggish creeks of the state. Their finely divided leaves efficiently capture sunlight. Bladderworts are often found floating freely on the water surface. Despite their aquatic nature, bladderwort flowers are showy and held above the water surface to attract pollinators with their yellow loveliness.

How can an aquatic plant be carnivorous? The plants produce bladder-like utricles along the underwater stem that look much like cancerous growths. These hollow bladders have tiny hair-like extensions that respond to motion. When stimulated by any wee swimming creature, the hairs cause the flattened bladder to inflate, sucking in both water and prey.

Of all the carnivorous plants, Bladderworts are the easiest to grow … a warm aquarium and some pond mud is all that is needed to keep a Bladderwort happy and healthy. So next time you visit one of our natural ponds or lakes, look for these carnivorous plants. You may even hear the faint crackling sound of the utricles closing as you lift them from the water.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy US Forest Service, Photographer Barry Rice https://www.sarracenia.com/galleria/g133s.html
Also Plant of the Week, USDA Forest Service, Photographer Barry Rice https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/utricularia_macrorhiza.shtml
Text: Michael Piep, Utah State University: Intermountain Herbarium https://www.herbarium.usu.edu/
Voice: Linda Kervin BridgerlandAudubon.org

Additional Reading:

Southwest Colorado Wildflowers, Photos of Utricularia: Enlarged Photo Pages/utricularia.htm https://www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/Yellow%20Enlarged%20Photo%20Pages/utricularia.htm

Utricularia – The Bladderwort, Carnivorous Plants Online – Botanical Society of America https://www.botany.org/carnivorous_plants/utricularia.php