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Apr 4, 2021

Flowers! - EurekAlert

Carvalho and Fabiany Herrera, postdoctoral research associate at the Negaunee Institute for Conservation Science and Action at the Chicago Botanic Garden, led the study of over 6,000 specimens. Working with Scott Wing at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and others, the team found evidence that pre-impact tropical forest trees were spaced far apart, allowing light to reach the forest floor. Within 10 million years post-impact, some tropical forests were dense, like those of today, where leaves of trees and vines cast deep shade on the smaller trees, bushes and herbaceous plants below. The sparser canopies of the pre-impact forests, with fewer flowering plants, would have moved less soil water into the atmosphere than did those that grew up in the millions of years afterward. "It was just as rainy back in the Cretaceous, but the forests worked differently." Carvalho said. The team found no evidence of legume trees before the extinction event, but afterward there was a great diversity and abundance of legume leaves and pods. Today, legumes are a dominant family in tropical rainforests, and through associations with bacteria, take nitrogen from the air and turn it into fertilizer for the soil. The rise of legumes would have dramatically affected the nitrogen cycle. Carvalho also worked with Conrad Labandeira at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History to study insect damage on the leaf fossils. "Insect damage on plants can reveal in the microcosm of a single leaf or the expanse of a plant community, the base of the trophic structure in a tropical forest," Labandeira said. "The energy residing in the mass of plant tissues that is transmitted up the food chain--ultimately to the boas, eagles and jaguars--starts with the insects that skeletonize, chew, pierce and suck, mine, gall and bore through plant tissues. The evidence for this consumer food chain begins with all the diverse, intensive and fascinating ways that insects consume plants." "Before the impact, we see that different types of plants have different damage: feeding was host-specific," Carvalho said. "After the impact, we find the same kinds of damage on almost every plant, meaning that feeding was much more generalistic." How did the after effects of the impact transform sparse, conifer-rich tropical forests of the dinosaur age into the rainforests of today--towering trees dotted with yellow, purple and pink blossoms, dripping with orchids? Based on evidence from both pollen and leaves, the team proposes three explanations for the change, all of which may be correct. One idea is that dinosaurs kept pre-impact forests open by feeding and moving through the landscape. A second explanation is that falling ash from the impact enriched soils throughout the tropics, giving an advantage to the faster-growing flowering plants. The third explanation is that preferential extinction of conifer species created an opportunity for flowering plants to take over the tropics. "Our study follows a simple question: How do tropical rainforests evolve?" Carvalho said. "The lesson learned here is that under rapid disturbances--geologically speaking--tropical ecosystems do not just bounce back; they are replaced, and the process takes a really long time." ### The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in ...

Feb 1, 2021

The best new perennial flowers of 2021 - pennlive.com

Dr. Jim Ault at the Chicago Botanic Garden came up with this new hybrid that solves all three of those issues.‘Summer’s Swan Song’ earned the highest five-star rating in the Garden’s three-year trial of ironweeds, the results of which came out last year.This variety grows only three feet tall, has interlocking branches that help hold it into a compact bush shape, and tested out with no disease despite other infected ironweed varieties around it.‘Summer’s Swan Song’ blooms heavily in purple from September into October and has narrow, olive-green leaves and red-purple stems.“A diversity of butterflies, moths, and bees are attracted to the flowers,” the Chicago Botanic Garden’s evaluation noted.'Drops of Jupiter' is a good-looking version of a common edible herb.Ornamental oregano ‘Drops of Jupiter’Most people think of oregano as a cooking herb. But this winter-hardy perennial also makes a good-looking sunny trailer – especially when breeding highlights the flowers as in the new ‘Drops of Jupiter’ variety.“Although it’s related to the oregano commonly used in cooking, this herb is meant to show off in the garden, similar to the ornamental onion ‘Serendipity,’” says Karin Walters, a vice president at Michigan’s Walters Gardens, whic...