A few hundred years ago a new fad was sweeping through the ranks of European privilege. It was a substance refined from an enigmatic plant brought back from the New World and rich folks just couldn't get enough. While it was hailed as a 'miracle' by some noted pioneers of science, more recent experience has shown unequivocally that long term consumption can lead to erratic behavior, serious weight fluctuations, and systemic organ failure. Even moderate, one time users can fall victim to immediate, fatal, cardiopulmonary collapse.
But it's not all bad: I must confess, on my very first date with Mrs. DarkSyde at the close of the roaring nineties, we both dipped our primate snouts into the stuff, gazed into each others now twitching, blazing eyes, and fell in love. More importantly, without this plant's close relatives, there would be no civilization, few mammals, no humans; and a lot less natural beauty.
If you could travel back to the closing days of the
Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago, you'd be well advised to watch where you step. Saurian monsters abound, hungry eyes watch from ambush. Hordes of tiny rat-like mammals doze through the bright daylight in fur lined burrows, emerging to feed at dusk. Aside from running across a carnivorous titan, you'd have to be careful of the little critters as well. Tread on the wrong innocuous refuge and you might crush dear old great-to-the-zillionth grandma in her sleep, wiping out the entire human race and giving rise to the dreaded
Grandfather Paradox. With all that to worry about it would be easy to miss the most important new organism to arise in ages, standing low amid the tangle of the steamy forest floor.
Botanists classify the so-called higher plants, meaning those with vascular tissue often characterized by root, veins, and leafy structures, into two main groups: angiosperms (In Latin angio means vessal and sperm means seed) and gymnosperms. Flowering plants are angiosperms, conifers which produce the familiar pine cone are an example of gymnosperms.
Both produce seeds. However, the seeds of angiosperms are surrounded by a fleshy wall in the ovary of the flower, often forming a yummy sort of 'wrapper'. Whereas the seeds of gymnosperms lack an equivalent structure and are often described as 'naked', or in Latin, gymno.
The little plant that could in the Jurassic Period was one of the first flowering plants. It was unobtrusive in a world ruled by colossal monsters straight out the human Id prowling through dense jungles or hunting giant Sauropods in the open meadows. But this small shoot had already struck a partnership with the most successful animal taxon on earth, the insects, and soon it would team up with the rest of the animal kingdom and take over the world.
The origins of flowering plants (Angiosperms), is a hotly debated topic. Some feel that a possible ancestor extends clear back into the Triassic Period over 200 MYA. But the oldest, unambiguous fossil evidence for a flowering plant is found in China and dates to about 125 million years ago. It was named Archaefructus sinensis which means "ancient Chinese fruit".
Archaefructus sinensis in artist's rendition
Regardless of where, why, or how they first evolved, the novel plants had hit on an ingenious survival strategy. Rather than playing a supporting role in the mandibles, jaws, and gullets of ancient insects, they created a sort of organic peace offering, free for the taking. Pollen and sweet nectar was the payoff for cross fertilizing the new angiosperms, and the flower blossom itself likely evolved as a visual transponder beacon, waving the little flyers on in as they flew overhead in search of nourishment. The blooms even developed secret patterns invisible to the eyes of large vertebrates, but flashing blood red bulleyes and other enticing patterns in ultraviolet wavelengths to their insectile couriers.
By the Middle Cretaceous, some 90 MYA, birds were probably in on the act, carrying fertilized plant pollen in their feathers and seeds in their stomachs, back and forth across the shallow Tethyian waters and the single global ocean, to every island and continent. Flowers of all kinds evolved, each in elegant resonance to the needs and desires of their respective animal partners. By the Late Cretaceous, 70 MYA, the luxuriant emerald-green world of the dinosaurs had been highlighted with bright blossoms and sweet scents. But the angiosperms were just getting started.
After the K-T Impact in which the dinosaurs disappeared and plant munching mammals rose to prominence, the new plants came up with their next smash hit; fruits and grasses.
Citrus Fruits in particular of the group Rutaceae are a favorite of tree dwelling animals. The animals eat the fruit prize, the seeds are safely transported all over the jungle, and then deposited, ensconced in a hefty pile of rich, home-made "fertilizer". It's a win-win.
Another angiosperm, Liliopsida first appears in the fossil record in the Eocene and by the Oligocene they had spread across the plains like a prairie fire. The partnership offered to animals by humble grasses was the entire leaf and seedy tops; the stalks can be cropped close to the ground, and the root system remains intact for the next growing season. By about 30 million years ago grasses dominated the new savanna giving rise to an explosion of mammalian megafauna.
Over the next 25 million years a few of these hardy flowering grasses evolved into the forerunners of modern cereal grains; wheat, corn, and rice. Those three grains today account for nearly three-quarters of the human diet. A whopping six-trillion calories a day are consumed in the form of cereal grains and close to three-trillion are ingested each day in the form of tubers (Potatoes, yams), vegetables and vegetable oil, fruits, as well as corn syrups and other refined sugars. On top of that, every pound of meat we eat conservatively represents another 50,000 calories of commercial cereals and wild grasses.
The Plant Kingdom could never support these kinds of numbers without the advent of flowering plants. And even with the sweet fruits and gritty grains they offer, if not for artificial selection operating over millennia on thousand of strains and species of angiosperm, there's no way humans could harvest the amount of food we need each year. Quite literally, human beings are flower-powered.
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Teosinte, above, started out as a single stalk of kernels, each enclosed in its own individual husk. Over time, artificial selection produced higher yielding strains with more tender kernels and husks until we can recognize the first corn cobs (Center). Today's modern corn (Right) is a giant mutant version so freakishly large it could not grow in the wild and would not be able to reproduce without human help.
Here we see a strain of domesticated Rice compared to one of its wild cousins. The difference in quantity and weight of the rice grains is starkly evident. Rice today comprises almost half of the entire human food supply.
Not only do angiosperms feed the planet, they also serve as nesting sites for all kinds of animals ... including humans. The majority of homes in the US and around the world are constructed of wood much of which comes from flowering trees such as oak. And of course angiosperms grace our modern landscape with beauty, elegance, and sweet perfumes.
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A steamy swamp drenched in color. Photo courtesy Ron Gershman. More wildflowers pics here
(Orchids and other Asian Flowers)
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A Rafflesia from Borneo. This genus produces the largest single flower blossom, measuring three feet across. These gigantic blooms may look cool, but you do not want one in your home or garden! They produce a powerful olfactory cue crafted for their primary animal partners, scavengers, which is said to be a dead ringer for a week-old rotting horse
How is all this ancient flowery history known or suspected? Some is educated guesswork. But the answer to what is known and why falls under the purview of paleobotany and a newer science called Palynology: The study of ancient pollen. Most small plants don't lend themselves well to fossilization. They're usually pretty fragile and the first angiosperms were more delicate than most. But plant pollen is tough stuff which does fossilize well, pollen gets spread far and wide, and it's often pretty distinctive to particular groups of plants. So now, because of the painstaking dedication of thousands of botanists, we have developed a robust database of ancient pollens tracing out the evolutionary radiation of angiosperms onto the global stage.
When it comes to natural history, we humans tend to be mesmerized by large prehistoric animals and/or catastrophic events which affected them. Most especially those leading to us. Asteroids hitting the earth make one hell of an illustration on the cover of magazines, tornados ripping through downtown LA make for thrilling movies. Angiosperms lacked the pomp and circumstance of the gaudy feathered dinosaurs and they don't produce dazzling explosions or instant global carnage. Nor does plant evolution spin an endearing tale of tiny mammalian underdogs hiding furtively in the day, only to rise like a Phoenix in the ashes of the K-T Impact and claim the planet.
But there is no other group of organisms that has had such an impact on evolution over the last hundred million years as the flowering plants. They nurtured our ancestors, supported our insect prey before we could think past the dawn, kept primate tummies stocked with fruits, nuts, and tubers, they are our modern foodstuffs and building materials upon which all of civilization depends, and without modern domestic angiosperms and the crops they provide most of our species would not last a single year. On top of all that many are truly exquisite to behold! And yet they still keep giving ....
Because we animals are the greedy pigs we are, the flowering plants could never fully trust us. Given half a chance we would just gobble down the whole plant; fruit, nut, flower, stem, and root. It didn't take any time for evolution to produce critters who would do exactly that. So as insects and other animals arose who were equipped with both the inclination and physiology to take advantage of the new arrangement, the plants responded by incorporating substances that would leave the offending critter a bad stomach ache or worse if it ate the wrong parts or at the wrong time.
Wait until fruit is ripe and the seeds within are ready for primate facilitated dispersal and you were rewarded with a sweet treat chock full of fruity goodness. Eat that fruit or nut before it was ripe and you got the screaming shits and a tummy ache from hell. And eating the leaves, stems, or the bark, earned the offender either a lingering, toxic brush with death or instant cardiopulmonary collapse.
Grasses enlisted gritty silica to discourage over consumption, setting off a mini-evolutionary arms race between themsevles and grazers. The current result of that contest is manifested by, among other novel adaptations, the heavily enameled, enfolded teeth found in horses and other ungulates.
But it's insects and their relatives that have always presented the gravest threat to plants. The bugs can reproduce at astonishing rates and give rise to infestations which will strip entire swaths of country side bare. And the arthropods, including insects and other creepy crawlers, comprise over half of all animal species on earth. To combat those legions, plants have developed an enormous chemical arsenal of natural pesticides.
Most of our early medicines come from such defenses; Quinine from the bark of trees, caffeine from the coffee bean and Kola nut, and morphine and other painkillers from the Opium Poppy. These substances don't pose quite the same danger to us big hairy mammals as they do to insects and their evolutionary ilk. Unlike most bugs, our bodies come complete with sophisticated, factory installed detoxification systems. In fact, for us humans, the mild effects of some of those insecticides are downright sublime.
Which brings me back to my first date with the future Mrs. DarkSyde and our 'youthful indiscretion'. That highly habit forming, brain altering substance we ingested at the dawn of the Millennium was first used in a crude form by Natives of what would one day be called Latin America, well over a thousand years ago. After the source plant was found and brought to Europe, early botanists marveled at how strange it was. For starters, the seeds grew straight out of the trunk like some kind of alien pods. And the damn things could barely grow in Europe. The uncooperative plant seemed to depend on a rare combination of factors uncommon in most of Western Eurasia; high altitude, high humidity, and steady year round temperatures.
Chemists fooled around with the new plant, eventually finding a method of extracting the good stuff it produced and processing it into a purer, more potent form: This novel isolate caught on like wildfire! Today the manufacture and sales is a multi-billion dollar global industry. And despite occasional recriminations, people blaming the plant rather than themselves for over indulgence, it's still my all time favorite angiosperm. And I dare say it's the favorite of many who are reading this.
See, Mrs. DS and I didn't have to score it with a wad of cash in a bathroom or down an alleyway. It was legally purchased for a few crisp one-dollar bills right over the counter. We partook in plain sight sitting at a table in the cafe. And soon the chemicals worked their neurotransmitter magic--or perhaps we were just meant to be--but for whatever reason Mrs. D and I were fluttering our eye's at one another like shy, high school freshmen after taking our respective dose. What was it? The Aztec's called it Xocolatl which translates as 'bitter water'. But we know the refined European version today under the more familiar westernized pronunciation as chocolate.
So this week's science post is for the important people in all our lives, those we sometimes foolishly take for granted, until they're gone. Our partners in life, mothers, daughters, spouses, family matriarchs, and guys like me who have a weakness for angiosperms of all types. Happy Science Friday with virtual Flowers and Chocolate to the superb ladies of DKos, the courageous women of Code Pink, the brave Gold Star Mothers for Peace, and all the rabble-rousing guys and gals down in Crawford.
And most especially for my own wonderful Lady here at DarkSyde Manor: I never could have imagined how lucky I would soon feel on that magical eve we first met to share flowers and chocolate. I love you deeply, forever, and unconditionally. You are more precious to me than the breath of life: Happy First Date Anniversery!