[APWG] Ecosystem Restoration and California poppies Re: What caused surprise results in Poppy Project, where seedlings all died?

[Robert Layton Beyfuss]

In some cases, the results may be far worse than irrelevant.  A greenhouse experiment using potted ginseng plants back in the 1980's showed that they generally all started flowering at age five. In intensively cultivated field grown ginseng, many plants begin flowering at age 2, but 90% will flower by age 3. In the real world of woodland ginseng, plants flower when the roots attain a certain size, regardless of age. The site conditions and genetic factors determine when that happens.  They may flower at age 4 or 5 on a good site, or more commonly age 7 to 8, but sometimes they never flower at all, even after 20 years.

Federal policy dictates that for roots to be legal to export, they must have 5 visible abscission scars on their rhizome, indicating that they are at least 5 years old and hence, have reproduced (according to the rule based on the pot study). The idea behind this regulation is to insure that the plants have reproduced before they are harvested. In order to observe the scars on the rhizome, the entire root must he harvested intact. This requires killing the plant of course. Most old time ginseng diggers know and I have confirmed with my own unpublished research, that if the rhizome is cut off the root and replanted at harvest time. The plant will come up the following year. It will be a much smaller plant, but within 3 seasons, it generally will become reproductive again. If the harvested plant did have seeds which were replanted at harvest time, and considering that ginseng seed will not come up until the second season after planting, it will take 8 to 10 year for those seedlings to grow into reproductive plants, if ever.

When pot studies form the basis of regulations designed to protect a plant in its native environment, the consequences can be bad, very bad.

Most ecologists already know this. Wild ginseng would be far better off with a regulation that read, "Ginseng roots may be harvested when they are as big as Bic lighter or bigger". That would work.



________________________________
From: APWG [apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] on behalf of Wayne Tyson [landrest at cox.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2013 11:04 PM
To: apwg at lists.plantconservation.org
Subject: [APWG] Ecosystem Restoration and California poppies Re: What caused surprise results in Poppy Project, where seedlings all died?

Yeah, but in any case, two pots do not a "greenhouse experiment" make. Beyfuss' point, however, should not be lost on those contemplating a successful career in ecosystem restoration--greenhouse experiments, with very few, very narrow exceptions, demonstrate nothing about the ecosystems from which the organisms were ripped; worse, they can be terribly misleading. Even in those few possible cases, the "results" gained tend to be irrelevant.

WT
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Layton Beyfuss<mailto:rlb14 at cornell.edu>
To: craig at astreet.com<mailto:craig at astreet.com> ; apwg at lists.plantconservation.org<mailto:apwg at lists.plantconservation.org> ; craig at ecoseeds.com<mailto:craig at ecoseeds.com>
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: [APWG] What caused surprise results in Poppy Project, where seedlings all died?


Hi Craig

Putting soil in pots changes the entire ecology of the experiment. I hate it when people do pot studies on plants that are growing in natural settings and try to extrapolate that data into the real world. Your plants most likely died from damping off, a common complex of fungal pathogens that is most virulent in containers and much less so in the real world.

Bob

________________________________
From: APWG [apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] on behalf of craig at astreet.com<mailto:craig at astreet.com> [craig at astreet.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 1:41 PM
To: apwg at lists.plantconservation.org; craig at ecoseeds.com
Subject: [APWG] What caused surprise results in Poppy Project, where seedlings all died?


Dear All,


>From my Poppy Project in Palo Alto, California, (Google = Poppy Project+Arastradero)  I took soil samples from under the poppies where they had been shedding seeds this summer from locations 10 feet apart, and put the soil into 4 inch plastic pots.

 I watered the pots and within a few weeks, had a lush growth of poppy seedlings in both pots.  Both pots were side-by-side evenly watered and neither were fertilized.

However, within a month, every single poppy seedling in one pot died, and you can see a picture of both pots at http://www.ecoseeds.com/what-difference.jpg.

These pot-tests of checking soil samples from the future revegetation sites have become the standard for Caltrans for their projects, ever since I taught them classes on the use of native plants 13 years ago, to discover and correct this problem.

This is the second time I have encountered this very important issue in such a dramatic way that is often overlooked, when trying to get native plants established here in the West---so any guesses of what the difference was?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333

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