Growing Natives in Colorado

 There is a national push for homeowners in the U.S. to grow plants native to their area (see previous posts  part1; part 2; part 3; HNPwebsite). The number of birds and insects have been dropping over the last 50 years. Lack of food is blamed because we replaced native habitat with lawns and parking lots. Rewilding our neighborhoods is not a realistic solution; what is suggested is that we each grow regional natives on our properties, making our yards contribute to local habitat. 

Alpine clover Trifolium dasyphyllum, an alpine tundranative that won't survive
in Denver, though the distance is only 50-60 miles.

What to grow in Colorado is a challenge. First, Colorado has unique native wildflowers, so advice from the coasts is often misleading. Second, Colorado is complex, with natives changing as you go up in elevation, over the Continental Divide, or from north to south; getting really local information is difficult. 

Strawberries, Fragaria, Beloved Fruits. 2. Uses and Folklore

Strawberries are popular fruits, eaten world-wide. This is despite the fact that fresh strawberries do not improve after harvest and cannot be stored for very long. So popular are they that we have bred them to produce fruit throughout the growing season, not just briefly in June or July, and ship them from warmer climates or big greenhouses for year-round fresh strawberries, and we freeze them or preserve them as jams and jellies to them always available.

fruit salad with strawberries

Plant Story -- Strawberries. Fragaria, Beloved Fruits 1. Distribution and Botany

Strawberries, genus Fragaria in the rose family, Rosaceae, are a popular fruit and have been for millennia. Twenty to 24 species are recognized, with cultivated strawberries adding many hybrids and varieties. They are native around the world, mainly in the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere, plus a few Southern Hemisphere species.

strawberries, Fragaria

Polyploidy Part 3. Patterns in Nature: Speciation

 Polyploidy is whole genome duplication, when all the chromosomes and so, all the genes, of an organism double. In plants, it is very common; easily 3/4 of plants are polyploid. 

an Oenothera

Because polyploidy is a genetic effect that takes place inside the cell's nucleus, it is not casually observed. But botanists discovered polyploidy as soon as they had microscopes to look at the contents of the nucleus and when they tried crossing polyploids and got results that didn't make sense based on diploid genetics. (Diploid = 2 copies of the genome, polyploidy = numbers over 2, like 3, 4, and 6  see previous posts in this series link link). Study of polyploidy began in the early 1900s.

Plant Story--Catnip, Nepeta cataria, a Well-Known Weedy Herb

 Catnip, Nepeta cataria, is one of the better-known little herbs because it is a drug for cats. Cats respond to catnip for about 15 minutes, with distinctive behaviors from rubbing on their faces and rolling in it to grooming and salivating. Young kittens do not respond and some adult cats never do. On the other hand, the response is widespread among cats of all kinds, lions, tigers, cheetahs, lynx, pumas and so on, but not dogs or rabbits or rats or other groups of animals. Since cats are common pets, people provide or grow catnip for them, with the result that catnip is known to many people.

catnip, Nepeta cataria

April in Tokyo

Here is a photo album of pictures from Tokyo in April. Beautiful spring flowers.

The photos are from April 2017 but if you hurry, you could still get there to see what it is like in 2024: 

Classical Japanese design

Polyploidy Part 2. And Crop Plants

Polyploidy is whole genome duplication, where all the chromosomes double. Animals rarely survive major chromosome changes, but plants usually do, leading to aspects of plant genetics that are quite different from animals. 

strawberry, Fragaria ananassa

Even though you cannot easily spot a polyploid by looking at it, polyploidy is not obscure. Many common, important plants are polyploid, for example bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), white potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), coffee (Coffea arabica), sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa) and cotton (Gossypium tomentosum). Researchers estimate that 75% of all plants, and likewise, 75% of crops, are polyploids.