Dumber Than A Potted Plant? Not So Fast

Out here in the far W , October is commonly summertime ’s last blast , but you would n’t experience it from the umbrella weather Lin and I run into down San Diego way last weekend . Do n’t get me wrong – I hump possess to apply the windshield wipers in our SoCal near - desert climate . An former start to the showery season makes me happy as a banana tree clout in a sequoia woodland .

After a jolting clap of Peet ’s dark joint chocolate and a pair of incorrect turns on the freeway ( so much for my iPhone MapQuest app ) we made our way to Balboa Park , a 1200 - Akka cultural Mungo Park that was primitively the location of the 1915 Panama - California Exposition and then the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition .

Not knowing quite where we were heading , we pulled into the first parking lot we saw , try the Museum of Photographic Arts . As we find our way through a newly planted garden between the construction , there it was , framed in the archway of a arcade – the1915 - epoch Botanical Building , one of the largest lath structures in the world .

The massive but graceful edifice houses more than 2100 lasting plants , mostly tropicals , some of which you might find in the houseplant section of your local garden shop . There were also a slew of specimens you believably would n’t see unless you macheted your way into a jungle .

Gotta Find A Story

abstemious pelting was finding its way through the gaps in the lath . I whipped out my trustworthy , not - water supply - proof Panasonic DMC - ZS3 , thinking that there had to be a blog mail here , but not quite certain what my creative juices would serve up .

“ I have intercourse , ” I conceive , as my writing muse kick in . “ Variegation . There are so many cool stipple , strip , splotched and smirch leaves in this collection , I ’ll write about how colored leaves can sparkle up a garden . ”

It seemed that lots of the variegation in this fete of leafage come along the veins in the leaves : white , chartreuse , yellow-bellied , ruddy , pink – a unquestionable Glidden vividness wheel of delights .

“ Plan B – I ’ll lurch appurtenance and shoot all the cool configuration of the plants ’ vascular systems , ” I think . “ How creative ! ” I noticed that some veins formed beautiful geometrical pattern : radial ( like the spokes of a bicycle roulette wheel ) ; palmate ( come out as fingers from a paw ) ; and pinnate ( branching out from a primal costa in a feather - same radiation diagram ) like the philodendron leafage , below .

So off I went to calculate for unusual leaves with different vein convention , like ferns andPeperomia , andAcalypha . Palms might be interesting .

Irresistible Force

While I was draw up this stab , I noticed the unattackable vertical line of products of the trunk repeating the structure of the lath . “ swop to Plan C ! I ’ll photograph the manner the building employs the same geomorphologic principles as plants , to keep from succumbing to The Big G – GRAVITY ! ”

Think about it . Every living thing on this major planet has evolved in the bearing of solemnity . We humans have bony skeleton . Vascular plants are high industrial plant that have tissue for transporting water , mineral and photosynthetic merchandise around . They manage to poise the pauperization for adequate “ bone - social structure ” to support the system of weights of the leaf with the tissue paper needed to convert C dioxide into organic compound , using the energy from sunlight . ( FACT : Scientists call this Frodosynthesis , a cognitive operation train by Hobbitsez ) .

Check how this dame ’s nest fern ( Asplenium nidus ) halt its fronds crisply upright . It ’s an epiphytic fern ( it lives up in the fork of trees with its roots in break down constitutional material ) from tropical , gamy rain environments where it gets hammered by heavy pelting . So the plant had to evolve a laborious - obligation vertical “ column ” , like the ace that hold up the Botanical Building .

Image you ’re in the tropics and sweating like a garden writer in Dallas in September ( commemorate that blog post ? ) . All you have is a canvass of notebook newspaper to winnow yourself . Your best strategy is to close up the paper into little peaks and valley to tighten it . That ’s credibly just what this decoration frond was thinking . It has to suffer up to scupper as much open to the sun without buckling in the wind . Ya ’ see , plants figured this stuff out way before structural technologist dream of slide rule and pocket protectors .

Carlton Winslow , the designer for the Botanical Building , understood the want to spread the weight of the dome across arches that resist compression . I ’m guess he was passably serious at math .

ThisFarfugium japonicum ‘ Argenteum’balances a similar freight on a single stem using a radial vena agreement to keep the out border of the beautiful , milky white-hot leaves from flopping .

Blinded By Science!

As we all think of from elementary school , “ The especially important characteristic of the vascular system of the leaf is its close spacial congress to the mesophyll . Measurements performed on six species of exogen , herbaceous , shrubby , and arborescent , have shown that the full distance of the veins averaged 102 centimeter per sq cm of blade . ” ( Plymale & Wylie , 1944 – Thanks to Susan Eubanks at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden for researching this for me . )

To us , it ’s simple , but how does a industrial plant flesh this stuff out ? To better understand how a simple look perennial figured out this corking trick , I asked the Farfugium a simple maths problem : “ If a poulet gets on a train in Miami channelize north into a 12 naut mi per hour headwind and a Ornithorhynchus anatinus leaves Kansas City on a Greyhound bus locomote at … ”

Well , you get the idea . The industrial plant just sat there staring at me , but I knew I was in the presence of wiz .

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