Welcome to Nature Guides, the podcast that connects you to the exciting natural world right in your own neighborhood. I'm Bob, a long-time nature lover, and today I'm joined by Greg, who is characterized as the... Plant guru. Oh, man. Pretty high praise, Greg. Yeah. Plant guru, plant geek.
Yeah, I've been called a plant pimp even. Really? Yeah. I think the guru might be the one you want to go with. Yeah, that's a little more reasonable. Yeah, that sounds good. So what have we got today? So last week we talked about... Witch Hazel, or the last time we had an episode together, and this time we're talking about seed dispersal strategies that plants have.
There's a couple of reasons why. Mostly, I try to show people that plants are more than just ornaments and that they actually do interact with our ecosystems quite a lot. I like to tell people is like, think about how plants might spread their seeds around. Now, this is one side of a coin that really encompasses plant reproduction. The first side of the coin, which we're not going to talk about today, is pollination, right?
and how different plants have different strategies for pollination. We probably need to talk about that at some point. That'll be a future episode. Great. Good. Another side of that coin, which will discuss today, is how...
After pollinated, these plants are actually dispersing their seeds. And in both sides of this coin, they are using... factors such as animals or wind to do this and so that's what we're going to get into today is kind of kind of so that when people go out they're looking around I know that you like to focus specifically on maybe a particular plant and go deep on that what I'm trying to get out of this is when people go out they can look at the plants around them and just start to think like
How did this plant get here and how does it move through the ecosystem and maybe even from continent to continent? Because some of these plants are around the whole planet. So it's kind of interesting to get into this. So I'm kind of excited. Yeah. So, where are we going to start? There's a lot of different ways that they do this. I guess we should probably start with how plants just are able to disperse their seeds by themselves. So...
Witch Hazel was the episode we talked about last time. And we didn't really talk much about that, how it did that. We alluded to it, I believe. We did allude to it. And to get specific, the... Dispersal mechanism is called balichory. No, it's science-y words, but we're going to break it down. Bala just is like the same root word as ballistics, so it just means shooting.
And then chory, C-H-O-R-Y, is Greek. It's the same root word for like choreography. So it's literally like the shooting dance. And what you'll see with all of these seed dispersal mechanisms, all of their scientific... Appalachians, they're actual names, and in Cory. So they're all dances, which I think is kind of illustrative when you're thinking about these things.
ornithicory, which we'll get into, like the bird dance. It's just kind of, for me, brings an image to my mind, these creatures working with the plants in a dancing manner. So anyway, with the witch hazel, why don't you tell me? I know you know some things about how witch hazel gets around. Well, yeah, it has these pods, and then they tend to be on the plant for quite some time, don't they? Yeah.
Up to a year. Yeah, exactly. And then they literally explode. Yeah. Right? That's exactly right. And they can go, I mean, I've... red 25 30 feet yep um which is a pretty good shot Shot? Yeah. And you were saying on the podcast the last time that you've captured them by putting bags around the plant, right? Yeah, ahead of time. Usually...
Again, the seeds develop for quite a while, so you've got to wait until you can kind of sense it. The more you have experience with these plants, the more you know when they're going to do this. But you can put a bag around the seed capsules themselves or around that branch so that when they do decide to shoot off,
you can actually catch the seeds. Otherwise they end up somewhere 30 feet away and you'll never find them because they're kind of small. So yeah, that's one way to catch them. There's a number of plants that practice this balichory, this shooting dance. Some oxalis. A lot of people think it's clovers. It's got three heart-shaped leaves kind of in a clover fashion, but it's got yellow flowers. And it's bitter if you eat it. It's kind of sour. I like the taste of it personally.
As the seed pod develops on that, the seeds will shoot out everywhere. And this is one of the most common weeds you'll find in a greenhouse because the seeds are shooting everywhere, and they're shooting from one pot to another to the ground, and they're taking root from there everywhere. So that's another plant that does this. Impatience are sometimes called touch-me-nots.
And the reason being is because the seed pod, again if you touch it, just explodes when it's ripe and shoots the seeds quite far. Generally speaking, there's two different ways that plants will do this with their seed pods. They'll either dry them out to the point, like the seed pod will dry to the point that it explosively splits open, and that's called dihissing.
or deheasing and then there's another fashion such as the impatience where the water the seed pod gets so turgid and full of water that anything that touches it also causes it to explode So there's kind of two different ways that these plants have figured out to explode their seed pods. So I'm thinking jewelweed. Yeah, jewelweed. Yeah. Which actually, it's...
scientific name is Impatience copensis. Yes, right. So it's our native Impatient here. Exactly, and Touch Me Not is another common name for it as well. Right, yeah. So there's a lot of plants that do this, and they really do. do get around quite a bit. I've got a really interesting story. So there's a plant in Florida. It's an invasive species. It's called Crotillaria, showy rattlebox. There's a couple native species of it, but this one in particular.
mentioning is is foreign uh i used to hike a lot down there i used to live down there so i would gather up these seed pods because they they rattled when you shook them and i thought it was kind of neat i brushed up against the branch and the whole thing shook and rattled So I gathered some and I was hiking with a previous girlfriend at the time. And at the end of the hike, we threw the seed pods in the front of the dashboard or the dash there.
Like three days later, she was driving around and it's Florida and it's hot in the, you know, she's driving in traffic and these seed pods just explosively blew up. And there's like 22 little tiny. seeds and things and she's just getting hit with shrapnel all now is that the point where she became the previous girlfriend yeah we're not together any longer so that could have contributed that could have been it yeah but um yeah so she just got sprayed with these seeds
and called me up yelling at me. But yeah, the same thing. These plants just explode and the seeds shoot out everywhere. Pretty fascinating to see. I guess there's a dynamite tree out there in the world. The name is. And it can shoot. I think I read the seeds can shoot out to like 100 meters away. I read that too. Which is just incredible. That is.
Crazy. I got to see this. Yeah, I got to see this in life. So that's one form. Other plants can kind of like just spread their branches out along the ground and deposit seeds. There's a neat little vine called Kenilworth. ivy that i tried to grow at my house but when i tried to train it over the ledge of this wall
all the branches the next day would just kind of turn in on themselves. And so I was like, why is this doing this? It doesn't make sense. It would go into the dark places of the wall. And so as I read up on it, what I learned is that the plant, after it's pollinated... turns those branches inwards and starts to look for dark places to deposit the seeds in those dark cracks. Very cool. Which I thought was really cool. And here I was ruining its whole strategy. But yeah, now it's doing very well.
Nice. Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways, I guess, that plants have figured out how to disperse on their own. And all of that is called autocory, which is just self. The self-dance. Okay. Dancing by yourself. Dancing by yourself. All right. I'm pretty accustomed to. Another aspect of it is gravity. Sometimes plants will just drop their seeds on the ground. Sunflower seeds, for example. They'll just...
The head will just kind of flop down and all the seeds will pour out onto the ground nearby. And that's just gravity, which doesn't take that much strategy, but it works.
So that's another way. But you know, the interesting thing about that is that there's reasons why very few plants do it that way. It's because if they would drop all their seeds very close to the... parent plant what's going on then direct competition there's a number of things going on there actually um direct competition with the parent plant is especially a problem um especially for perennial plants. Now, if you think about it, sunflower seeds could be from an annual plant.
So it might not be a big deal because that plant that produced those seeds might not be there next year. Okay, makes sense. Sure. However, you're right, though. For a lot of plants, especially perennials or trees, shrubs and that, it's not good to have the baby develop right next to the parent. It's direct competition. It's the same genetics oftentimes or similar genetics. And in reading about this, there's a great...
a biologist named Dan Jensen, who's out there, and he's done a lot of work on seed distribution. And what he realized in studying forests is that... plants need to get their babies out, away from them. Because if you're a tree and you've been there for 50 years, the animals know where you are.
the fungus is already present around you. The bacteria is already present around you. So as you start releasing your babies, those animals already know, oh, I can just go there and eat this stuff directly. So... Ideally, what the parent plant wants to do is get those babies out in some way, away from the parent plant, and away from the predators that may be lurking nearby. And there's a number of ways that they've done this.
Usually working with animals is a great way, but let's really quick jump to wind. Okay. Do you have information on wind? Do I have information on wind? Wind, yeah. Well, um... Yeah, you know, I ran across a term that I hadn't really thought about, seed shadows. Oh, oh, okay.
Yeah, and so seeds have shadows. So these aren't giant seeds that you sit underneath the shadow of, no. These are, when they are wind... dispersed, then you're going to get kind of a shadowing effect because a number of them are going to drop out close to the apparent or relatively close and as you get further out and further out and further out it becomes less and less and less so you get this kind of the shadowing effect
with siege which i'd never thought of before but i thought that was pretty cool yeah especially with the wind ones like you're saying um another effect similar is that, say, there's a hillside nearby a wind-dispersed plant, like sycamore, for example, or cottonwood. Cottonwood, you can see this a lot. The wind will blow the seeds, and the seeds all gather up along...
the one side of a hill and maybe not on the other side, the windward versus leeward side of a hill. And so you'll have populations just developing on that side of a hill and perhaps not on the other because they're not blowing on that other side of a hill. So yeah. Starting to look at some of the seed dispersal mechanisms really starts to inform how plants are distributed around the planet. For example...
So windborne seeds, like we're talking about, which is called anemichory, the wind dance, those are usually plants that are the first ones to make it to islands that are just emerging from the ocean, for example. So a lot of the plants that you'll find on islands oftentimes have an origin from a wind-dispersed seed. I know a lot of the islands in the Pacific, for example, they have a lot of Asteraceae species of plants.
Aster, ACA species of plants are known for their little tufts of... hairs that distribute the seeds about once they ripen up and blow around so it's very interesting you can start to identify biogeography based off of the seeds and how they're spread around yeah yeah and there was a guy who took a trip a number of years ago. And you may know this guy. He got on this trip because his mentor recommended him, but he said that...
Even though I recommend him for the trip, he's no botanist. He's more into geology. In zoology. And the name of this guy was, as you might guess, Charles Darwin. And he was on a...
on His Majesty's service boat called the, do you know the boat? The Beagle. Oh, good. Oh, yeah. They're on this long voyage, and they get to this famous spot, the Galapagos Islands, and there's a... A lot of debate about how influential the Galapagos actually was with Charles Darwin, maybe not quite as much as we make it out to be now. But he kind of, botany was not his thing. In fact, he described the Galapagos Island as Brazil without trees. That's an interesting thing. But he...
This was part of his job, is to go collect, although he was interested in a lot of other things, he collected quite a number of plants and brought them back with him. He gathered, I think, like 173 species of plants that he brought back, and that's about a quarter of the known flora that's in the Galapagos Islands. So he did an excellent job of actually collecting this stuff. And then later, as is true inside,
Often, it took a long time to kind of look at these things. And he had some botanists that were looking at some of this stuff with him. And one of the things that... they discovered in his collection was cotton. And in fact, it became named Darwin's Cotton. Pretty nice. All he had to do was bring it home, and he got the name. Pretty cool. Anyway, the Galapagos Islands, as you probably know, are a fair ways off the coast. Almost 600 miles off. Yeah. So across water. So the question Darwin had...
As a very amateur botanist at the time was, same thing we're talking about. How did they get here? I mean, it's a good question. How did things cross almost 600 miles of water? And in particular, we'll just take one, we'll just take this cotton plant. Okay, how did it get there? Well, cotton has these, how would you describe it, Greg? If you opened it up, it's like...
Tufts of hair. Pappus, I think, is their proper name for the hairy things that come off of seeds. Right. And so it had a lot of that, and it turns out that those will float. And so they figured out that probably these things could... could have made it across from the mainland, but 600 miles floating. I mean, that's quite amazing, but they now have tested cotton and found out that it will indeed endure quite a bit of time.
I'm thinking it was somewhere along the lines of, yes, here it is, two and a half months. Wow. These things can float. Yep. But the cool thing is they found out, okay, what's the origin of cotton? And it turns out the origin of cotton in the world is Africa. But yet there's... cotton in South America and in North America now. So how did those things get there? They had to make it across the ocean. And the chances of that are...
Not zero. No. But close to zero. So what do they have on their side? Because if you put out a bunch of cotton off the coast of Africa, the chances of making it to South America are... Almost zero, but not quite. Well, okay, I'm going to jump in here just with a little bit of like... Earth history. So the Panama Strait there, the isthmus there, that's only been cut off for about 3 million years. So there definitely was an opportunity beforehand.
Yeah, that's a good point, but I don't think that's when it came over. But yeah, that's a good point. I don't know if they know that for sure. Here's another thing then. If it wasn't wind or floating, let's just jump right into the animal distribution. Birds are another major distributor of seeds, especially onto islands or across the continents. And just to jump back one other thing about the...
Seeds traveling across the ocean. I'm not so surprised because, for example, coconuts have done that same thing. They have. Mangrove trees are. Yep. Absolutely. All around the world. They do. I even know of a plant called the knicker bean that goes right along the coasts around tropical areas around the world. But my research into that plant is that the seeds can float in saltwater for up to nine years.
and then still be viable so i'm not surprised plants are yeah and in fact cotton will go three years so with rep you know if you've got enough time and enough repetition yes that's it It only takes a few to make it over. Very interesting, though, jumping back to Darwin and the Galapagos. So the question was, too, okay, so say these...
Did float over 600 miles compared to the Atlantic journey would be not much. So they get there. But then how do they get up on to land from that point? Maybe that's where the... The pappus, the hares, enable them to be wind dispersed from there. Yeah, that's one.
That's one thing. But there's another more elegant answer. Oh, I'm sure. What is it? And because Darwin was interested in what he's famous for, not cotton, I didn't even know cotton grew on the Galapagos, and I doubt very many people know. But Darwin was spending a lot of time looking at finches. And guess what? It turns out that some of them line their nests with fluffy materials. Oh, all right.
So it could well have been that some of Darwin's finches. Oh, that's beautiful. Pulled this out of the water and put it in their nests. Yeah. Isn't that cool? That is cool. Yeah, because that makes sense. They'd gather it up from somewhere and bring it somewhere else. And put it there and then it would drop.
and it'd be in a perfect location where it eventually would fall down into the ground. So that's actually an example of diplocory. Ah, I figured it was. Diplo, di meaning two, and then cori, so it's two dances, right? They floated across via water and then were picked up by birds and spread even further afield. There's a really strange example of like an animal eating seeds and then that animal being predated upon by another animal.
that predator animal then pooping out the animal it ate and the seeds so there's weird situations like that where yeah several steps in just the seed dispersal right yeah yeah I'd like to go back. I mentioned the birds. Yeah. Let's go back to it since we're talking about islands. And even Darwin, for a certain degree, some of the plants he's even documented, like duckweed. And this isn't seed dispersal so much, but still.
propagation of plants being caught on birds and then distributed elsewhere. So ducks are pretty commonly doing this. especially with water plants that might be in some mud or things like that. The seeds might be deposited on their feathers or their feet and then moved about that way. Another one is berries, and this is pretty important with birds.
Probably across the world because, for example, the honeysuckle that's affecting the area here is being dispersed in the same manner that good plants such as dogwoods or even... hackberries are being dispersed. Primarily birds are attracted to bright objects, bright colors in that. They see color, which is wonderful, but they are attracted to those berries. They eat them.
And from there, they could do one of two things. I've noticed with Hackberry, what they do is in their gizzard, they grind off the outside fleshy coating. that is full of the nutrients that they want, and then they cough up the seeds later. And if you're a gardener here on the East Coast, you'll know that hackberry is one of your tree weeds. It comes up everywhere you don't want it to come up. because birds are coughing out the seeds everywhere.
The other example is when... It hurts me that you refer to Hackberry as a weed. I put it in quotes. It's air quoting. Yeah, it is air quoting. Because a weed, I mean, if we define a weed, and we should get off on a little shoot here. So, I mean, kind of my definition of a weed is some... plant that you don't it's you don't want it growing yeah but we can't
We can't take all hackberries and put them in that category, right? I know you're not doing that. No, that's not what I'm doing. But if you're trying to grow vegetables and a hackberry comes up in the middle of it... It's a plant where you don't want it to go. Right. You could transplant it. You could. Dig it up and move it somewhere else. Give it to your neighbor. They're wonderful plants, especially for the birds. Right.
And what about, though, you touched on the honeysuckle. Now, in terms of that, that's an invasive plant. It wasn't from here. Yes, the berries are attractive. And, yeah, the birds will eat them. And that's why we have it a problem.
It's sort of those berries are sort of the junk food of the bird world, aren't they? Yeah. I could eat candy all day if I wanted to. Sure. Would it do me very well? Probably not. Not long term, no. No. And would it, if I were to have... babies and i'm feeding them that stuff it probably wouldn't do them very well either this is part of the reason why we really need to be conscious of the plants that we're planting in our yards again back to the horticulture
in my field here, it's oftentimes just ornaments. These plants are just ornamental and they're pretty, but you can really destroy the ecosystem. in this manner by not paying attention to how these plant seeds are being dispersed, or you can greatly benefit the ecosystem. For example, planting certain plants that do feed our native birds good food.
And if those seeds are distributed elsewhere, they're not going to destroy the ecosystem. Whereas, for example, with honeysuckle, one, it's not particularly good for birds to eat. And then also, when they do poop the seeds out in this case... Those plants then take over areas of the ecosystem and actively start to destroy our habitats. So again, be conscious of what kinds of plants you're using.
How the seeds are dispersed matters a lot in this regard. In fact, calorie pear, winter creeper, burning bush, English ivy. These are all plants. Buckthorn, these are all plants that have berries of some sort that birds are attracted to. They're eating them, and then they're dispersing them all across our native ecosystems and destroying...
those plants are then getting established and destroying our habitats here. So, yeah, some of the problematic plants are also being distributed via birds also in that way. Not good. No, no, not good. And you're right. You have to be aware of that because some people say, well, I just... Well, in fact, Beth's mother loved honeysuckle. She was a big gardener. But, you know, you can see there's an attraction to it. I mean, yes, it has these pretty flowers and it smells wonderful.
So there's that. I don't know that her mom ever really thought about the implications of it. And if she had, I doubt that she would have planted it. Yeah. I try to indicate to people real quickly, if you know... If you had never thought about birds distributing seeds before, there's a certain point in the springtime where bird poop is white and then all of a sudden it turns purple. Right? And you know this, right?
Where do you think all that purple's coming from? There's like a flush of berries early in the spring. Blackberries, raspberries, service berries, mulberries. All these are berries that flush out in the spring to feed the birds. And all those berries are in... The seeds are in those berries. So when you see bird poop going from white to purple in the spring,
You know the flush of berries has happened, and the birds are now using those berries, but also that means that the seeds are being dispersed in mass at that point in the season. There's another flush later in the fall where you've got chokeberries.
magnolias, dogwoods, pokeberry, same thing. The berries will turn, or the bird poop will turn purple, and if you really look at it, you'll see a bunch of seeds in those. Oh, yeah. So birds are... actively moving a lot of seeds around yeah beyond birds though uh i'd like to talk about ants if we could a little bit yeah go for ants because uh this is a really fascinating uh piece of of life history to me uh
Flowering plants and ants, which are in Hymenoptera, they're in the same family as bees and wasps and that. So they have a long history together, these two types of creatures. Ants, though, on every continent, they've found ways to work with plants, except Antarctica, of course. So there's over, I think, 30,000 species of plants that have figured out a way...
to attach something called an eliosome onto their seeds. Right. Now the eliosome has nothing to do with the health of the plant. What it is, is it's usually full of lipids or amino acids or nutrition. And the plant will drop the seeds on the ground. Ants, which are basically ubiquitous, they're everywhere, they find these and they're attracted to that eliosome, this little nub that's...
pretty rich in nutrients. They gather up this seed with that Eliasome and they bring it to their nest, which is usually underground. They eat the Eliasome or they feed it to their young and then they take the seed that... itself and put it in like their garbage which is usually humus rich because it's just plant matter and it's already underground in doing this the plant the
Ants really take the seeds and they put them right where they need to go underground, secure from drying out on the surface of the soil or being eaten by bacteria or other seed predators. And also, this is another interesting fact, ants oftentimes have formic acid in their saliva. I don't know, have you ever eaten ants?
I have not eaten eggs. No. I'm telling you, they're citrus-tasting. They're very acidic. Really? You eat them quite frequently? Yeah, all the time. You know me, Bob. Yeah, that's good. Well, you know. I've tried them in my life, and they're very acidic. Okay. And it's usually for me. acid yeah so ants just by handling seeds their their their saliva is disinfecting the seeds from fungi or bacterial predators as well so it's a real
nice relationship that these ants have figured out with plants. You know, it's hard to get in a word edgewise with you. I thought I was going to get that. I would get you on that, but you didn't. Of course you know that. Let me interject this, though, for people who are interested. interested in wildflowers in the spring. Beautiful, these ephemeral flowers. And a lot of these wildflowers in our area, trilliums, bloodroot, violets, wild ginger, twin leaf, many more.
are all thanks to the ants and the eliosomes. And it's a very cool interrelationship. And I think we think of ants as being these... Well, of course, you, I guess, when they're in your kitchen, you just eat them. Sure, there you go. Put a little peanut butter on them, and there you go. That's the thought. I have to tell Beth that. I'm not living that down.
No, that's okay. But I think, you know, we put them in kind of the pest category, you know, that they're in our way, sort of. Well, you know, if they're in your kitchen... There's a reason why they're there. You're a messy eater. Yeah, yeah. So maybe you need to figure out, you know, like why they're there and not, you know, not just necessarily...
Try to get rid of them right away. Figure out what the source problem is. With natural things, they're going to do what they're going to do. They've been doing that for thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years. It's a lot easier for us to change our behavior and expectations than for...
to expect ants to change. They're never going to change. Right, exactly. But yeah, what you're saying is we think of them as pests, but actually plants that have figured out how to work with ants, the lineages of plants that have done this... have actually increased in diversity, I think, two times as many species as lineages that haven't figured out how to work with ants. So I think that's showing that they're both succeeding in this way.
Also interesting, though, some relationships like this get so tied up that creatures become dependent upon each other. That doesn't seem to be the case with the ants in what's called Myrmecachory, the ant dance. They'll use the seeds, but there aren't any documented cases where the ants are dependent upon a specific plant in that way. So that's just something kind of interesting too. Yeah, I want to talk about...
Another one. Another one, okay. What's another one? Megafauna. Oh, all right. All right. Okay. I have a tendency to really like this because it combines history. and what we see around us today in the natural world. If you're just looking at our natural world around us, you might see certain things that just don't make sense. For example, asage orange is a great example. If you don't know what it looks like, it's about the size of a grapefruit. It's green, greenish yellow. It's wrinkly. Some...
Kids call it monkey brains. Yeah. Yeah. It's in the mulberry family. So it's got a composite fruit. So there's a lot of seeds inside. There's some right back here. Oh, okay. In fact, you see that one cut down there? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Beautiful wood. So this plant, though, whenever you find the fruit, which is a large fruit, it's sitting at the base of the parent plant.
which we've discussed, is not ideal. And while gravity might have it roll down a hill a little bit, it still isn't an ideal situation. Sometimes you'll find one of the fruits shredded, but what that's usually from is like a squirrel. Right. That's predating on the seeds, eating the seeds, and not actually spreading the seeds. So that's not the disperser. Mm-hmm.
So if you're paying attention, you can find a number of plants in our ecosystem that have adaptations for animals that are no longer here. Ossage orange is a great example. Pawpaw is probably another. If you want to expand it out to Central American plants, most people are familiar with avocado. That's an excellent example. So let's just talk about that, for example.
Soft flesh on the inside, very nutritious, high in fat content. One big fat seed in the middle that's highly toxic as well. If you ate that, you'd get really sick. Have you ever handled... A seed from avocado with a little bit of the flesh still on it. No. It's very slippery.
Oh, yeah. Okay, yes. I mean, it slips right out of your hand. Yeah, right. So if you rewind back in North America about 14,000 years ago, even 20,000 years ago, there were some large animals here. They call them megafauna generally. But we're talking like big animals. Yeah. Mammoth, mastodon, giant sloths. These are animals that probably could have taken a fruit like that and then with their trunk, shoved the whole thing in their mouth.
maybe not even have to bite it because the fruit is so soft and squishy that they might just mash it with their tongue on the roof of their mouth and swallow the whole thing. And these, you know, I mean, if you don't... The monkey brain. How big did you say? Grapefruit? It's a grapefruit size. It's a pretty good size.
Yeah. Grapefruit. Yeah. And we called them hedge apples. Yeah. And because they actually were planted as, and that's exactly what you're seeing back here. This was an old hedgerow and there was a street back here called Orchard. Yeah. And that was, you know, that's why they're there. these wonderful hedges but
to think about an animal swallowing one of these. And then, of course, it's different. You're right. There's this debate about whether squirrels really eat these things or not, and you can read different stuff on them. It's clear that they tear them apart. Yes. And it's also... clear that there are seeds in there. Are those edible?
If you roast them, you can eat them, and they're good. Jeez, I cannot get you on anything. I've tried them. They're good. Yeah, I did too, actually. It's a tremendous amount of work for a very small yield. Yes. But yes, they're absolutely edible. And they're pretty good. Yeah, they're not bad. They're kind of like, I don't know, pumpkin seeds or something. I don't know. Yeah. They seem to...
They have a nice taste in them. Of course, as Beth said, if you spray them with olive oil and put salt and pepper on them, you know, pretty much anything would taste pretty good. Even ants. Yeah, even ants. There you go. You can maybe add a few ants in with the seeds.
So these giant hedge apples, though, they pass through the system of these megafauna. Right. And then it actually... help them yeah right it helps this the plants in a couple different ways um let's talk about pawpaw for example okay um if pawpaw And a lot of these plants, they do have like a woody like seed coat around them that unless it's scuffed up, somehow water has a hard time penetrating into the embryo to start germination.
So something that horticulturists do a lot to germinate certain plants to break down that hard seed coat is acid stratification. We'll take a seed and put it in. you know, some sulfuric acid for a couple minutes, and then the seed will grow readily. Well, that doesn't happen in nature, so it begs the question, how does this happen in nature? It seems obvious then. Some of these seeds have to go through the gut.
of some big animal and be worked on by those gastric acids in the animal's gut to then affect germination. more properly as the seeds are deposited in a big pile of, you know, elephant dung or something like that. So, yeah. Right. And by the way, we have podcasts on, if you're wondering, you know, like, what is a pawpaw and all that, we won't go.
We won't go too deep into all that, but we have a podcast on pawpaws, and we also have one on Osage Orange. So you can check those out and see what we're talking about. And the concept of these megafauna, there is a book out there. You know it. Yeah, Ghosts of Evolution. Yes, and who wrote that book? Connie Barlow. Connie Barlow. Great book. Yes, it is. It's a wonderful book. And she got a lot of her research from that professor I mentioned earlier. Yes, Dan Jensen. Yes, exactly right. Yes.
So some of these fruits, again, you can kind of see them. Just to give you a couple indicators, they don't split open. Like a lot of... fruits do they split open to release their seeds these don't the seeds are going to be on the inside unless they come out of this the fruit itself the seeds will probably rot yeah um also the fruits generally are very aromatic
Like pawpaw has got a very sweet, almost cloying smell to it. They're not bright colored. And they drop the fruit on the ground when the fruit is ripe. Like pawpaw or even... American persimmon. If you try to eat that when it's on the tree... Yes, I have. You feel like you're going through anaphylactic shock, right? Yes. Definitely. Not a great idea. You have to wait for them to fall on the ground. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. Yes.
I did two the first time. I think a lot of people did. I wonder how many people have been deterred from eating them again. Oh, I think probably you'd have to be a pretty slow learner to go after them more than once, don't you? Yes. But on the other hand, if you get them when they're ripe... on the ground. The problem is you've got to get them
Yep. You got to be around at the right time. Yes. Because there are a lot of other animals interested. Yep. Yeah. But again, though, that they ripen up. And pawpaws in the same way. I'll say joins the same way. Avocado also. They ripen when they fall to the ground. So it's not for an animal in the tree. it's for an animal on the ground. Right. And all this is indicating, you know, megafauna seed dispersal. One thing I think is really interesting about this...
It's taken, for example, apples. In the wild, they're very small. Or strawberries. In the wild, they're very small. Really small. And it's taken horticulturalist humans to work with these plants for thousands of years to get them to be the size where they're now... Something that we can actually have a meal with. That's a lot of work. Let's give thanks for a moment to these megafauna that had already been working with these plants.
to develop large fruits such as avocado. That's very nutritious. It would have taken humans a long time to develop that fruit in that manner. And yet these creatures did it for us on their own. Quite honestly, we probably wiped them out once we showed up in North America. Exactly. But the legacy of them is that we have great big fruits. Mango is probably another one. Plums, stone fruits, maybe even another one. Cucurbits, pumpkins, squashes.
Probably another one. These are big fruits that now humans get to enjoy that were developed over thousands, maybe millions of years by megafauna working with the plants around them. That's an example of like mutualism. And ants are doing the same thing. And it seems that birds are doing the same thing as well. I would argue that this is where humans need to go. Finding mutualistic, cyclical relationships with the plants around us instead of such linear, give me everything you've got.
And then I'll take more kind of attitude. So I like how the plants and animals have worked with these things. And you can see that everything has succeeded by working together. And so I really would like to see humans maybe learn some of these lessons or... think outside of the box maybe how we can do this differently exactly that's a very good point wonderful yeah
Anything else? No, I think we're... You've expanded? Okay, this is great. This is wonderful. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. One other. What? Sorry. Go for it. There's a whole other series. I know it. We're all talking about animals eating things. Yes. And distributing the seeds. However, plants like burdock, cocklebur, Bidens, all these different burrs have adaptations to actually...
cling on to your fur or your skin or your clothes and then travel along with you and eventually fall off in, you know, land and start germinating there. Exactly. There's a whole other seed distribution mechanism. Very cool. Burdock is famously the one that I think the guy who invented Velcro came up with that by looking at that and seeing those little hooks that are in there. I try to, for some reason...
At the Civic Garden Center, we have a lot of interaction with University of Cincinnati engineering students. And I always try to impress upon them to think about the natural world and how they could apply this to engineering. And I try to express to them that...
A plant like burdock, which has given us Velcro, is allowing us to have a product that we can use in outer space. If humans want to get around this solar system, well, gravity doesn't exist in outer space. So there's only one thing that holds two things together.
effectively and it's velcro and if it wasn't from plants and a guy looking at it and figuring out how this could be useful elsewhere we wouldn't have that product and maybe we'd be floating all over you know these space stations without that that plant given us the idea. Yeah, it's very cool. I mean, there's so many of these applications and we...
And I don't think a lot of people realize that. I mean, going back to early aircraft that were flying, seed dispersal and the way that some of these wing structures on seeds were actually... for the designers, part of how they designed it. And in fact, it's not in our podcast to talk about Orville.
Wilbur Wright too much, but the reason why they beat out all these hotshot designers, these engineers that were hanging out at the schools you're talking about, Greg, you know why? Because they were out watching the birds. And they were paying attention to how do birds do it and what are the aerodynamics of birds and, you know, developing wind tunnels and all that sort of thing, which is exactly, they were really trying to figure out how to disperse.
Our own creation. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So, yeah, we owe a lot to the natural world, and you're right. We need to come around to the idea that we work with it. Yes. And then it's a win. We were talking about that before we went on. It can be a win-win for everyone. Maybe we'll stick around for a while if we do that. I think, quite frankly, if we don't figure that out, we won't stick around for that long. Exactly. We have to get on this. Yeah, we do.
Well, good. That's a nice uplifting note to end on. But I think it is. It's hopeful. I mean, I think we can figure it out. I think so, too. And we are figuring it out. Just go out and take a look at what's around you and start thinking about these things. I think that's a great idea. And please, if you have friends of yours, disperse our podcast, Out to the Winds, however you do it.
Tell your friends, because we'd really like to get the word out that the natural world is such a cool place, and we're trying to do our part here. to get that word out. So help us by telling your friends and dispersing a little Nature Guys knowledge. Greg, I think we have to say, until next time. Step outside and stay a while. Take care, everybody.