Spring Bloom in Fall--It's a Problem

In today's SF Chronicle (January 1, 1917), I wrote about plants that bloomed last fall in San Francisco that ought not to have been blooming until spring, caused by continuing climate change.

While it's true that we typically have our warmest "summer" weather from mid-September to mid-October, this weather has been lasting longer than usual. Last fall, the warm days and mild nights lasted until near the end of November. We celebrated time spent outdoors in nice weather, but some of our garden plants reacted by blooming and leafing out as if it were spring. This is a problem for the plants, which put energy and physical matter into doing this, so that when spring really does come, they have less stored matter and food energy to do it all again. This weakens the plant, leaving it more susceptible to all kinds of setbacks.

Case in point is my apple tree, which has borne bountiful crops of delicious apples for 30 years. But recently it has been trying to bloom in fall. Then, because winters aren't quite cold enough, it blooms later than usual in the spring. And, because of the energy it used up in fall, it blooms more sparsely. Two years ago, it had practically no fruit.

Last year it did better, though not as well as it used to do. The photo below, which I sent to the Chronicle, but they didn't use in the paper, shows my tree last November, with a few last apples and last leaves till hanging on while blooms and new leaves opened all around them. Now, on January 1, all the new leaves have succumbed to cold, wasting all that effort.

Apple 11-17-16 Sq IMG_8892 copy

If you are growing other temperate plants in the Bay Area, such as cherries and plums (ornamental or fruiting), magnolias, lilacs, or azaleas, you may be having the same kind of problem. What's to be done to save our plants? Obviously continue to work against climate change, a movement in which California in general is doing well.  But we can also join an effort to record the changes, in which our regional data will provide extremely valuable evidence.

More data about how climate change is affecting plants in our region is especially important so that we are represented in a system that has so much more data from cold-winter regions.

There are two organizations that are seeking citizen science data. One is the National Phenology Network (www.usapn.org/), sponsor of the National Phenology Project. It studies both plant and animal species. Another, Project Budburst (budburst.org), is studying only plant responses. Phenology is the study of what plants and animals do in response to seasonal changes.

Sending records to these databases is easy to do online. Log in, choose a plant, and tell them what it is doing on various dates. Children can do it at home and school classes can do it. Both web sites have curriculum information to help teachers fit the work into classes. It teaches observation, appreciation of plants, climate science, ecology, and how science is done

So as our new, and rather unnerving, year begins, please help observe and record what is going on with nature. Your reports will be powerful.


Open Source Seed Initiative

 

OSSI flags april 17 2014 event

Photo by Jack Kloppenburg

Have you purchased a plant and found that the label says it is illegal to propagate the plant? Illegal to make cuttings, divisions, or to to save seed? Increasingly, when plant varieties are being patented, making it illegal for a customer to get them without purchasing them from a certain company.

A separate issue affecting gardeners who want to save seeds is the increase in the market of F1 hybrid varieties. These are bred to display a certain set of desirable traits in the first generation, but not in subsequent generations. There is no law against saving F1 hybrid seed to grow, but if you do so, the positive traits will break apart in the next generation (the F2), some appearing in some offspring, others in other offspring. A certain number of the plants that grow from the seed won't have any of the positive traits of the first generation.

Older plant varieties, the so-called "heirlooms," are not F1 hybrids. This is because throughout human history, farmers and gardeners didn't know how to breed plants to create those hybrids. They just saved seeds from their best plants from year to year. (Another word for these non-hybrids is open pollinated. So all heirloom seed is open-pollinated.) The heirloom seed movement has been finding these old varieties and selling them through their seed catalogs. 

Besides this salvaging of old varieties, certain plant breeders, university researchers or public-minded private individuals, have been breeding new open pollinated varieties with positive traits that rival the hybrids. They may "grow out" a hybrid, saving the best seed from several post-F1 hybrid generations until they obtain seed that will stably reproduce the best traits of that hybrid. Or they may make crosses themselves, transferring pollen of a plant onto the female part of the flower of another, hoping to create offspring with the best traits of both parents.

In my San Francisco Chronicle column of January, 2016, I reported on some open-pollinated sweet corn varieties that carry the supersweet gene of some hybrids. Then, in my July column, I reported on some new open-pollinated vegetable varieties that will be useful in cooler gardens near the coast. (You can access my column at sfgate.com, with a search for Pam Peirce.)

However, in my research to locate these new varieties, I came across a new initiative that gardeners should know about. This is the Open Source Seed Initiative. Some of the new breeders of open-pollinated varieties are registering them with this initiative. By doing so, they are stating that they will not patent the seed of the variety, nor can it, or other varieties that are bred from it to be patented. Here is their logo:

Cropped-ossi-logo-words

 

You will start to see this logo in seed catalogs. If you are viewing a catalog online, you will often have the option of sorting the offerings to just show the ones registered with the Open Source Seed Initiative. You can also read more about the organization that registers the varieties at osseeds.org.

One of my favorite varieties covered by the initiative is 'Flashy Butter Oak' lettuce. It is a looseleaf lettuce with broad, oakleaf-type leaves, speckled with maroon. I find it to be sweet and nonbitter even when it is mature and about to form seed, and that it grows well in cold or warmer weather. (I garden in San Francisco, so my definition of warm is not what it would be inland.)

Flashy Butter Oak copy2

Photo by Pam Peirce

This lettuce was selected or bred by Frank Morton of Lupine Knoll Farm at Grant's Pass Oregon. At my last reading of catalogs, you could buy seed at Bountiful Gardens (bountifulgardens.com), Territorial Seed Company (territorialseeds.com), or Wild Garden Seed Company (wildgardenseed.com). (I have also been saving seed to donate to the Seed Library at the Potrero Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, but they will not always have it, as my donations may not be large enough to meet the need.)

Frank Morton has released several other nice open-pollinated varieties, several of which are under the Open Source Seed Initiative, and you will see his name listed next to his  varieties in seed catalogs. So that you can have a face to associate with these varieties, I offer his photo, collecting lettuce seed. Thanks Frank!

Morton download copy

Photo by Karen Morton

 

 

 

 


Resources for Learning to Identify Plants

Learning to identify plants by family is a really good way for a gardener to get a handle on plant ID. It gives you a head start on understanding all sorts of things about a plant. It makes it easier to learn the plant's name, if you don't already know it, gives clues about how to grow it and propagate it. You will start to organize your knowledge of plants in very useful ways.

Next week I'll be teaching some California Master Gardeners to identify 5 plant families. For my students and others who are ready to learn more about plants, the following list of books and a web site will be of help. They offer descriptions and illustrations of plants in different families, as well as explanations and drawings to show the meaning of botanical terms.

I should also say that this is the second of two talks on the subject I can present to interested San Francisco Bay Area audiences. Each covers 5 families, includes a Powerpoint slide show and an extremely useful handout, and takes about 1 3/4 hours to present.  If you might like me to give one or both talks to a group of gardeners, you can send me an email through my website, pampeirce.com,

Rose IMG_5406 copy

Flowers are central to plant ID. A rose is known by its five sepals and petals, many stamens, and single pistil. In a double-flowered rose, many or all of the stamens have been replaced by petals.

Here are resources to help you learn more:

The Botany Coloring Book, Paul Young, Jacquelyn Guiffre, Harper Perennial, 1982.  Learn plant anatomy and terminology through coloring the illustrations.

 

Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification, Thomas J. Elpel, Hops Press, LLC, 6th Edition, 2013. Learn to identify plants based on plant family patterns. Covers eight common families.

 

Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary, James G. Harris, Melinda Woolf Harris, Spring Lake Pub, 2001). Twenty seven hundred definition, nineteen hundred illustrations.

 

Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth, Seed Savers Exchange, 1991.  Food crops, listed by plant family, with discussions of pollination and seed saving.

 

The families of flowering plants, L. Watson and M. J. Dallwitz. Descriptions and illustrations for the plant families. Includes an interactive key for plants and a set of botanical poems by Giles Watson. The link to this web site is:  http://delta-intkey.com/angio/ or use this link: Families of Flowering Plants

Often, plant descriptions in gardening books will include the name of the plant family to which a plant belongs. For example you will find plant families listed in the Sunset Western Garden Book and in Golden Gate Gardening. If you want to know what other plants are in this family, try looking it up on the Watson & Dalwitz site, or try Googling the scientific name of the family. Wikipedia has articles on each plant family and you will find other useful sites.