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The fairy gardener: Evolutionary ghosts
Special to the online edition of Windy City Times
by Jim Edminster
2014-03-04

This article shared 2722 times since Tue Mar 4, 2014
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It may be stretching it a bit to include the concept of "evolutionary ghosts" in a garden column but I find the topic absolutely fascinating and it does have to do with plants, after all.

Evolutionary ghosts are the effect of extinct species of plants or animals on living plants or animals. On the campus of Taft High School in Chicago, where I teach, there is a line of Kentucky coffee trees by the parking lot behind the baseball diamond. Under all these trees there are piles of their large seed pods which stay there until and unless the groundskeepers pick them up. Nothing, absolutely nothing, eats these pods.

This is very strange evolutionarily, since all fleshy pods and fruits have co-evolved with some animal as a dispersing agent. ( The animal eats the fruit and "deposits" it via its digestive system elsewhere, with a bit of fertilizer wrapped around it. ) So where are these trees' animal helpers? They've recently been discovered by way of mummies and other paleontological clues. Imagine a walking haystack, big as an elephant, six-inch claws and a long prehensile tongue. What should be eating Taft's seed pods is a ( ghostly ) giant sloth.

Likewise what creature ate the brain-shaped chartreuse softball-sized fruits of the Osage orange tree of Kansas and Missouri? The tree is covered top to bottom with vicious thorns and nothing wants the unpleasant fruits. But a monster with horns in its mouth and a snake attached to its face once did eat the nasty things. Can you imagine mammoths on the plains of Kansas?

These creatures are ghosts because when the ancestors of the Amer-Indians came over the Bering Straits 14,000 years ago these ancestors ate their way thru 400 species of animals in the 2000 years it took to get to the tip of South America. Mammoths, sloths, horses, camels, cave bears, giant buffalo—all ghosts and gone. Only the plants they ate are left.

*************

If you want to help a present-day creature from going extinct, plant some milkweed; it is the only food of the monarch butterfly, which is in dire ( not Bering ) straits. Milkweed, which used to grow on the edges of cropped fields, is killed by the chemicals in gene-altered crops. ( Thank you, O mighty Monsanto! ) You'll be doing yourself a favor too because milkweed is a sculptural plant with a beautiful pink flower that smells nice. And give out those milkweed pods or plant them in vacant lots!

*************

Many gardening magazines are showing, for the coming year, flower boxes with exotic tropicals in them: How did you like mini-tropical evergreen trees plus burro's tails plus blue agave and gray ghost sedums? Or ti plants plus silver angelwing begonias plus two-toned bright green vinca vines? Or crotons and bright red New Guinea impatiens?

***************

Prairie Moon catalog sells both seeds and plants of Illinois wild flowers. Giant blue campanella are particularly handsome. Go online for an online catalog or have the company send you a free paper copy.

**************

One hopes all the snow and rain makes our gardens verdant but, hey, if not, gardeners wouldn't be happy without something to fuss at, with or about.


This article shared 2722 times since Tue Mar 4, 2014
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