Monthly Archives: January 2018

Life Inside the Cell: Waking Up to the Miracle, part 1

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This title is available in three editions, each one more expansive and current. This one provides an understanding of the quantum nature of life.
This book looks more deeply into the capacities and functions of water in the cell.
This one takes a more practical viewpoint as the author is a professor of bioengineering. He has a gift for teaching that comes across in this book.

[This is the first in an extended series of three posts, this one on life within the cell, the second, on the evolution of plants, and the third on the New Phylogeny and Eudicots.  This first ‘installment’ concerning life within the cell, is divided into two parts, the first covers the function of the cell itself and, importantly, the role of water in the cell.  The second, part 2, will examine the concept of quantum biology and its explanative necessity for life beyond the ‘simple’ construct of cells, tissues and organisms. While trying to understand the ongoing reorganization of understand and classify plants, I found it necessary to better understand these other topics, what it is that we are ‘messing’ with! ]

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I begin here with the cell, what I’ve learned about what makes the cell, its existence and life within it, so amazing, something which should give us all pause, when we consider our own lives and what we do.  When scientists ‘split hairs’ in their arguments on which group to assign a species, when they attempt to link them to their ancestors, many of which are now long extinct, to understand their relationships with other organisms, they have a purpose.  They are often looking much deeper into what a plant is, what constitutes life and how it evolved.  Phylogeny, the science that attempts to establish relationships between different organisms, different species, to link one to the other across time, is about both the history and the continuing journey of life on this planet.  It promises to tell us much about our own place as well as that of the hundred’s of thousands of other species with which we share it.  Ultimately, if we choose to understand this, it will change the way we garden and our relationship with the many landscapes that cover the Earth.  Our gardens are our own personal expressions, works of ‘art’, and must live within the parameters of life in effect on our little pieces of ground and the Earth.  They reflect our understanding of the limits and possibilities at work here.  The better that we understand this the ‘better’ our gardens will be, the more in synch they will be with life.   Continue reading →

My Father’s America and Tomorrow

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My father in 1930 on the Green Ridge family farm

My father was born in 1922 on Denman Island, a small island, roughly 12 miles long, on the coast of British Columbia, located about 124 miles north of Victoria, BC.  His family lived there on a small subsistence farm without electricity, indoor plumbing, a car, a truck or a tractor.  To get work done required their own muscle or the help of their horses or neighbors.  Water came from a hand pumped well, heat from trees they took down on their land.  They produced much of what they ate in a large vegetable garden and orchard storing it in the root cellar below their house, and the occasional deer and fish they could make time to catch.  They had chickens for their eggs and meat and kept pigs to sell as well as for meat.  They kept bees for honey.  A herd of dairy cows, Guernsey’s, because of their high butter fat milk, was their primary source of income, separating out the cream each day, storing it in large cans that they would lower down into their well to keep cool so that it wouldn’t spoil.  Once a week they and other farms hauled it by wagon to the general store.  There it would be picked up by a truck that came over on the ferry which would carry it to the plant in Courtney for processing into butter and other products.  What skim milk they didn’t use they fed to the livestock.  They would slaughter extra calves for their own consumption.  It was a relatively common life, not that many years ago, that to today’s highly urbanized, consumer population, might seem light years ago.  I’ve often wondered at the ‘adjustments’ my parents had to make to make sense of this world today.  I’m beginning to understand now that I am well into my 60’s and retired myself. Continue reading →

My Red Abyssinian Banana: Testing its Limits to Cold This Winter.

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My Red Abyssinian Banana after our return home on Tuesday after Christmas. The next few days warmed slightly and topped, dug and moved it into the basement on the 28th of December.
I took this the morning of January 9. It is showing 3/4″ of leaf extension. Were the meristematic bud frozen/dead this could not happen.

It’s alive!!!

My Ensete appears to have survived my mistreatment/testing of it having left it in the ground until Tuesday after Christmas. The photo shows that it has pushed 3/4″ of new growth since I cut it back and placed it in its corner in the basement. The NOAA weather station at PDX reported 17 freezing minimums to that date, eleven prior to December 20, ranging form 22º to 32º, nine of them below 30º, four below 25º. Over this period my local temperature, bizarrely, dropped to 30º, once, maybe. A second cold spell hit here from Dec. 20-27, again less severe than that at PDX, but closer. The Reed College weather station recorded five freezing minimums over this period, 32º on Dec. 12, 30º on Dec. 21, 28º on Dec. 24, 30º on Christmas and 27º on the 26th. Reed College is about 3/4 of a mile south of me on similar terrain with the same aspect. The freezing, cell shattering, of my plant’s leaves was very evident after this latest cold snap. During December’s first cold spell I was generally a degree or two warmer than the Reed station’s minimums. Over the second cold period my area was more consistent with the PDX temperatures, but still on the warm side. So, yay! My red Ensete has indeed survived 5 significant freezing minimum temperatures, as low as 27º! Those of you who dig yours in October take note, your gardens can benefit from these statuesque specimen much later into the local winter season here…and, return to their garden locations earlier as well.
 
How do I know its alive? Bananas are all monocots and their dividing/growing meristematic bud is on top of the rhizome, just above ground. If this bud freezes your plant cannot grow any longer. As I pointed out, mine has been growing, slowly, in my cool basement. Would it have made it down to one night at 25º…I don’t know. It is also difficult to say how many more days it could have survived down into this minimum range. Remember that it isn’t just the absolute minimum temperature we need to worry about, but the duration as well. Three of the coldest days had very cold highs as well just making it above freezing allowing the cold to penetrate tissue more deeply.
Here is the link to the values reported at the Reed College weather station in December.  Here is the link for the values from the NOAA station at PDX.