Leaf veins

[herschel]

My kid's science teacher taught me something today. And frankly, I'm a little embarassed to admit that I didn't know this. I think it's more like, I had never given it any thought before.

On a field trip to a park, the class was to collect leaves, cones, etc. I was looking over some of the sheets handed out the night before and I found this.........."Leaves have veins. The veins carry the food that the leaves make back to the tree for use and storage."

My first thought was he's wrong. Here's some gym teacher in a money-strapped school system, teaching science and making it up as he goes along.

After thinking it over and doing a little research, I discovered that he's right.


"A vein typically consists of a strand of xylem and a strand of phloem surrounded by a layer of cells called a bundle sheath. The phloem is typically on the lower side and the xylem on the upper."

Tree Maintenaince, P.P. Pirone


It makes perfect sense. I must have missed that day of class.

Honestly, how many of you knew this?

 

[Nickrosis]

Leaf morphology was a topic in plant biology, a class I took at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

High school plant biology was a nightmare for me because the teacher was drastically underqualified. We may have gotten into leaf morphology in that class, but I try to blackout bad memories like that.

Nickrosis

P.S....I learned something really interesting today, myself. All the time that I dipped leaves in rooting hormones, I knew it was auxin, but I learned today that the auxin is synthetically produced by fungi for packaging. At least I thought it was interesting....

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

As long as we are talking biology and hormones...do you know what happens when a tree blows in the wind?

 

[TREETX]

Mike, just guessing but something like this http://www.tree-consult.org/ENGLISCH/Media/Savannah.pdf

Tree statics cool stuff. Academia can amaze me at times.

I am familiar with leaf veins being the textbook symptom of oak wilt in live oaks is veinal neckrosis. Basically, a failure in the vascular system resulting in leaf absicion without the removal of mobile nutrients. The result is a green leaf with brown/dead veins.

There's more to trees than ropes and chainsaws.

 

[Reed]

I agree, there's some amazing science behind plantlife, but it's guided principally by politics and that's guided by religion and/or money. My wilt work was assisted by a Regional Cancer Center, not a plant pathology lab at a land grant school!

Genetic and biochemical dissection of signaling pathways regulating plant pathogen defense has revealed remarkable similarities with the immune system of mammals. Numerous plant proteins have been identified in the perception of pathogen signal molecules - they recognize disease by prior experience.

Receptor-mediated changes in levels of calcium in the cytoplasm and nitric oxide are generally observed in plant-pathogen interactions. Also, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene are components of signaling networks that provide the molecular basis for specificity of plant defense responses.

This is just one of our recent advances in our understanding
of early signaling events involved in the establishment of plant disease resistance. However the scientific community by large still adamantly denies any connection however remote of human/animal disease pathology and plant life - they still think we can inject a poison without harming the host.

It all boils down to interconnections - that which we're part of, not in dominion over. Trees can tell us much more than if it's winter or not, there's been a drought and when, or if we should build another subdivision or make a park. An old oak (you've seen it Nate) taught me about blood cancers, and what I should do to either die by it or survive with it.

By the way, 2,4-D is an auxin mimicking hormone comparative. It was designed to cause uncontrolled cell growth (cancer) as a warfare agent at Fort Detrick, Maryland. It's mechanism for plant death works just as well in humans. The tree doesn't die because it was poisoned, it dies because it grows itself to death in a very short amount of time.

So....

Science can be both good and bad. Long live chain saws and ropes!!!!!!