Lentils are unassuming annual plants, with slender stems 6-20 inches tall, pinnately compound leaves, and small clusters of ½ inch long white, pink, or purplish pea-shaped flowers. The fruit pods contain just 1 or 2 round, lens-shaped seeds that resemble tiny monocles. Humans have been cultivating lentils for over 10,000 years, making this legume one […]
Dorothy Jean Gleason Witt was a botany student at Washington State College (now Washington State University) from 1938-1948. Born in Ellensburg, Washington, in 1921, Jean and her family moved to Spokane during the Great Depression, where her father, Jay Gleason, served as a chaplain with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Jean developed an interest in botany […]
In early May, I took a trip around the Olympic Peninsula on the opposite side of Washington state. The Olympic region lies in the middle of the Pacific temperate rainforest zone, the largest such zone on the planet, ranging from northern California up to Alaska. As the name implies, these rainforests get heavy precipitation, around […]
Duckweeds (genus Lemna) are common inhabitants of slow-moving surface waters of lakes and ponds around the globe. At first glance, they might be mistaken for mats of algae or fragments of grass or sedge leaves left behind by a sloppily-feeding muskrat. Individual duckweed plants consist of a single, flat thallus (technically a modified leaf-like stem) 1/8 […]
Xerpha Gaines (1891-1970) was a prominent Washington State University alum and botanist, with particular expertise in weeds. Born in Wisconsin and moving to Washington with her family in the early 1900s, she was an exceptional student with an intimate familiarity of the local flora. She married WSU agronomist Edward Gaines, who encouraged her to pursue […]
Alpine habitats are found above timberline on only the highest mountains and are characterized by high winds, cold winters, and short growing seasons. Plants that are hardy enough to grow in the alpine tend to be low-growing (to avoid being shredded by the ever-present wind) and perennial. Many alpine species in the Rocky Mountains, Cascade-Sierras, […]
Back in college as a budding biologist, I remember learning of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the late 18th and early 19th century French scientist widely derided for his hypothesis of evolution based on acquired morphological traits (such as a longer neck in giraffes, or beefier biceps in blacksmiths) being passed on to subsequent generations. Lamarck’s ideas were […]
With their high temperatures and low precipitation, deserts are a tough environment for most plants to survive. Those species that do persist employ one of three strategies. Annuals evade drought by germinating, flowering, and setting seeds in a narrow window of suitable soil moisture in early spring, surviving unfavorable periods as drought-hardy seeds in the […]
The Ownbey Herbarium’s namesake, Marion Ownbey, is most famous for his research on natural hybridization and speciation in the genus Tragopogon (see SOS # 38). But Ownbey had an interest in the genetics and evolution of several other plant genera, including Castilleja (paintbrushes), Calochortus (mariposa lilies), and Allium (onions). Ownbey named at least 15 new […]
Model organisms play a central role in guiding scientific inquiry. Because we lack the resources to exhaustively study every aspect of all species, we designate a small selection as “models,” on the assumption that discoveries in our models can be applied to non-models. This assumption holds because all life has a common ancestor, and therefore […]