The secret abilities of plants

Today I learned something that surprised me: plants that mimic other plants. The question is…how?

Seven years ago, Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra reported on their discovery of Boquila trifoliolata (Lardizabalaceae), a woody vine from temperate rainforests of southern Chile, capable of complex leaf mimicry, when leaves of up to three different host plants were mimicked by leaves of one B. trifoliolata plant. However, according to a side-by-side published commentary, the absence of any plausible hypothesis for such a phenomenon makes this report unexplainable and mysterious.

Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra preferred some chemical volatile signals released from the host plants, which would allow the B. trifoliolata to mimic leaves of host plants. As an alternative proposal, they also speculated that horizontal gene transfer between host plant and Boquila vine, mediated perhaps via airborne microbes, might allow this leaf mimicry. They proposed this scenario because B. trifoliolata leaves mimic the nearest foliage, irrespective if these leaves are from the host plants or some other neighboring plants.

Interesting ideas, and I find them very reasonable. Sure, horizontal gene transfer, of the diffusion of morphogenetic signals — that seems plausible, initially, when I didn’t know the degree of mimicry. These plants copy the shapes of leaves, and the degree and pattern of venation. That seems a bit much to attribute to the chance transfer of multiple genes, or picking up signals that change or modify the plant’s intrinsic signals. The authors of this paper propose a surprising alternative: the plants are watching other plants in their neighborhood, and copying them visually.

No way, I thought. Plants don’t have eyes. How do they see? Let’s skip right past that minor anatomical difficulty — maybe we can return to that issue another day — and instead block the possibility of genetic or developmental signaling. They came up with a delightfully simple experiment.

we have been given a rare opportunity to test plant vision in more detail. The simplest way to test the vision hypothesis with the B. trifoliolata would be to see if it would mimic a non-living leaf shape from an artificial plant. In this study, B. trifoliolata was exposed to the artificial plastic plant with a characteristic leaf shapes. The results of this study show that this is indeed the case as leaves of B. trifoliolata mimicked leaves of the artificial plant. Hopefully, this report will stimulate more experiments in future to improve our understanding of the plant sensory abilities.

Surprise! Organic Boquila leaves copied plastic leaves to varying degrees!

Leaf shapes in Boquila trifoliolata. (a) Non-mimic leaf, with three lobes, dense vascular network. (b) Mimic leaf, with a single lobe in the apex, less dense vascular network. Red asterisks shows examples of free-ending veinlets.

Now I’m confused…how do they do that? I haven’t thought of any alternatives, yet. I welcome your speculations.

Until I have a better explanation, though, I’m going to have to cover the houseplants.

Putting on my prophet hat again

Another prediction: He won’t show any shame

I am compelled to make a prediction about Ken Paxton of Texas, who is running for the Senate.

Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes…

Stop right there. Seven homes? Who needs 7 homes? I have ONE, and I was quite proud of the fact that I have paid it off before my retirement. I figure I’m not rich, but am moderately self-sufficient and financially stable, but now I’m question that. What are people doing with seven homes?

Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.

Oh. He’s a landlord. I guess if I had 7 homes, that’s what I’d have to do with 6 of them, but I wouldn’t be proud of that.

And he didn’t bother reporting them, and further, LIED to say he received no income from them? I wouldn’t do that. I’d declare everything openly, and would maintain and pay taxes on them, which would probably mean I’d be selling them off as quickly as I could. Paxton, though, doesn’t believe in ethical behavior.

Which leads to my prediction. Ken Paxton, endorsed by Trump, will be Texas’s next senator. And by this accomplishment, you will know that Texas, and perhaps the rest of the country is well, is so corrupt that we’re going to need to plow it with salt and eject it from the Union.

Maybe Mexico could do something with the real estate.

Oh no! A schism!

I hate you both equally, boys

How dreadful that an organization of polite, well-dressed people are experiencing a disruptive division. They’re such thoughtful people!

For a gathering of people devoted to denouncing the inferiority of blacks and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims, the biannual conferences thrown by the New Century Foundation, publisher of the racist newsletter American Renaissance, are decidedly genteel affairs. Men dress in suits and ties, women in formal business attire, and there are no uniformed skinheads or Klansmen to be seen. Large plasma television screens, Starbucks coffee spreads and fancy linens adorn the hotel meeting hall. Epithets have no place here.

The article continues with an anecdote about a speaker, David Duke, saying There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and spirit (you know who he’s talking about!), prompting a member of the audience to rise up and shout, You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!, before walking out. It’s a schism between the people who hate brown people and Muslims, and the people who hate brown people, Muslims, and Jews. They’re all fucking Nazis.

This extraordinary incident marked the beginning of an open rift between those on the radical right who see blacks, Hispanics and Muslims as the primary enemy, and those who say “the Jews” are ultimately behind every evil — a split that has usually stayed just below the surface but now threatens a leading institution of American extremism. While in the past he has managed to bridge this divide mainly by ignoring it, American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor now must finally come to terms with the split. His dilemma boils down to this: Throw out the anti-Semites and try to build a larger movement with electoral possibilities like those increasingly seen in Britain and Germany; or openly join hands with the very energetic neo-Nazis even though that means the loss of any remaining shred of respectability.

I suggest that we throw out the whole deplorable, bigoted mishegoss of American Renaissance. It’s a battle between two giants of racism, David Duke and Jared Taylor, both of them contemptible and repulsive, and we’re supposed to care which one wins the struggle for dominance? Sure, Taylor is less aggressively anti-semitic, but that doesn’t matter in the long run — if the organization is shaped in his image, it will still be white nationalist, and eventually it will be purebred Nazi. There isn’t a meaningful hair of difference between the two.

The attack of the mega-farm!

A local dairy proposed building the largest herd of cows in the entire state of Minnesota right here in my county — a massive enterprise that would suck our aquifer dry and turn the water into giant stinking fecal pools that will breed more flies. Much of the local population is opposed, and Riverview Dairy has never made a case for why we need so much milk. I was motivated to attend a packed meeting of Stevens County officials where they were considering giving the dairy a permit.

The outcome of the meeting was that the county officials did not issue a permit, but adjourned to think about it. At the time, I made a prophecy.

In the end, a small group of old white men, the planning commission, will retreat into a meeting room and make the decision, and I predict that they will decide that Riverview doesn’t need any more studies of their environmental impact. The county has a total population of 10,000, and this one dairy operation will be pumping out waste equivalent to the output of a city of 750,00 people, but we’ll just let them do their thing and then find out the consequences. Short-sightedness will win again.

Am I a true prophet? The Land Stewardship Project shares the latest news.

On Tuesday, Sept. 1, Stevens County officials approved Riverview’s conditional use permit for the proposed West River Dairy expansion near Morris. This decision largely clears the way for what will become the largest concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Minnesota history. Once completed, this 18,855-cow facility will be more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy.

The county’s approval comes after farmers and other rural residents expressed deep concerns over the past several months about the potential environmental and economic impacts of this facility. More than 1,400 people submitted official public comments about West River Dairy to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and 1,140 people signed LSP’s petition calling for a full environmental impact statement (EIS).

Despite deep community concerns regarding incomplete local water data, massive water usage (319 million gallons per year), and 250 million gallons of liquid manure storage near impaired waterways, local officials declined to impose protective groundwater conditions. We are deeply disappointed in the county commissioners’ decision.

I have a gift.

Unjected?

When you are creatively bankrupt, and you want to make money off the internet, what do you do? Make a dating site, the most hackneyed idea of the modern age. The crackpots have created a dating site called “Unjected,” which is exclusively for people who haven’t been vaccinated. Imagine: in addition to getting a venereal disease, you could get measles, polio, covid, smallpox, or ebola from a date! You can trust your partner to be ignorant, deluded, and uninterested in hygiene or good health. If you’re really lucky, maybe you can go on a date with RFK jr!

The only reason they give for wanting to avoid vaccinated people is their slogan, unvaxxed are hotter, a subjective opinion that can have no evidence to back it up. Unless, that is, they mean that the unvaxxed are more likely to run a fever.

I’m not interested in dating ever again, but if I were, education and intelligence would be my major criteria for a partner, and this is a site that excludes that category.

The bad guys have faces

scummy Wisconsin billionaires

Fortunately, I’ve completely tuned out of television in this election season, or I’d be even more anxious right now. Minnesota is being flooded with conservative billionaire money. You know who benefits: Republicans.

The Republican nominee for governor, Lisa Demuth, has a super PAC funded mostly by a Wisconsin billionaire — Richard Uihlein, who has spent years bankrolling right-wing candidates and campaigns in other states and nationwide. In 2024, Uihlein and his wife were top Trump donors, spending $59 million to help deliver the White House back to Trump and to support other conservative candidates.

ANow they have turned their eyes to Minnesota. The Uihleins’ dark money super PAC heavily funded the Restore Sanity super PAC, which spent nearly $3 million to ensure Lisa Demuth won her primary — more than five times the amount Demuth herself raised, and about three times more than all of her Republican opponents raised combined.

In the counties where the ads paid for mostly by this single donor didn’t air (mostly outside the Twin Cities), Demuth often lost or underperformed. In the weeks leading up to the Republican primary, Demuth bragged about the work the super PAC was doing for her. She owes her campaign’s survival in large part to one man, and Minnesotans deserve to know what kind of return on investment he’s expecting.

Uihlein is not investing in Minnesota’s elections on a whim. In other states, he and his wife have used their personal wealth to fund extreme causes that they know would be rejected without their enormous outside spending. They have bankrolled efforts to restrict abortion. They have financed organizations committed to repealing the Affordable Care Act and to privatizing Social Security. They have funded efforts to undermine workers’ rights and labor unions and have fought reforms to lower prescription drug prices.

Why are billionaires intrinsically evil? How can anyone look at their agenda and fail to realize that they are not friends of humanity?

We can blame a good part of this villainy on the Supreme Court.

Going forward, the only long-term solution is to get big money out of our politics by overturning Citizens United and passing strong, nationwide campaign finance reform. Until then, Minnesotans can do their part by holding politicians accountable when they allow people like Uihlein to try and rig the system for themselves.

Whoever the next presidential candidate is, they better put a priority on purging the corruption from the Supreme Court.

DO NOT WANT

As a sop to the monstrous ego of our president, the US Mint is issuing a Trump coin this fall. It’s ugly, even if they used artistic license to clean up his decaying face.

Of course it’s a fake gold color.

Daniel Phelps informs me that the only president who had his portrait on a coin while he was alive was Calvin Coolidge; ominously, the Great Depression hit shortly after he left office, so let’s hope that’s not predictive. Julius Caesar was assassinated shortly after his ego prompted him to issue a coin with his face on it, so maybe that’s the correlation to hope for.

If I somehow got one of these things, I’d immediately turn around and ask for a dollar bill instead. If I couldn’t get a quick refund, if I’d have to hang on to it for a while, I have access to all kinds of acids and a Dremel tool. It would not return to circulation unmarred.

What would you do if given one of these abominations?