Disambiguation of cancer

I was confused by the use of the word cancer so differently in at least 4 unrelated definitions: a crab (in Russian this word refers to a crayfish), malignant disease, constellation, and sign of zodiac. I was wondering what could be the connection between for example a crab and malignant disease, and I'll quote directly the answer from Answers.com : "The word cancer is Latin for "crab". Its use for cancer goes back to Hippocrates (ca. 460 BC - ca. 370 BC) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#History), who is said to have derived it from the appearance of the cut surface of a solid malignant tumour, with "the veins stretched on all sides as the animal the crab has its feet, whence it derives its name".

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_disease_cancer_called_cancer#ixzz18s2Ol1Pa"

Exploration of the spurge family Euphorbiaceae

Botanists who are concerned with this family look at it as quite a hodgepodge. Scientists use a term polyphyletic to describe the hodgepodge situation, whereas other groups of plants even if they seem quite diverse have derived from a common ancestor, thus being monophyletic. We are pulling together our thoughts to include all the different groups of spurges that we are aware of and use for medicinal purposes, food, forage, as ornamental plants, production of rubber, and even as benchmarks for land survey.
To continue with Euphorbiaceae we are first going to discuss what was the genus Phyllanthus, now arisen to its own family. The choice of the name Phyllanthus was made by Linnaeus in 1737. The name Phyllanthus comes from Greek meaning leaf-flower. The tiny leaves are placed uniformly along the stem, which is slightly arched. At first it looks like a single leaf with many leaflets, but close observation shows that it is composed of one leaf per very short node. I think that a word "Phyllanthus" is an appropriate name. At each tiny node a single short stem forms pendulous flower to be followed by a round fruit, composed of 3 carpels and each carpel contains 2 seeds, rather than one as found in Euphorbiaceae. The seeds were dispersed from a mature fruit and they germinated, even though when I first acquired this plant its natural germination occurred around the original plant indicating the high degree of self-fertility. When I was in Thailand I had the opportunity to eat the fruit of Phyllanthus, it was very pleasant as a fresh fruit. The family Phyllanthaceae was described in 2006, but starting from 1993 there were evidences that it should be separated from Euphorbiaceae.
To be continued...

A new twist on Curcurbits

My first experience was about 40 years ago: we were raising in my garden a variety of Curcubit called spaghetti squash. The plant was destroyed by a gopher, which ate the root. And there were all those half-developed squash going to waste. So, we cooked one up as if it were a zucchini and it turned out delicious, and we and our neighbors consumed all of that. Recently the "record" was played over again: a vigorous pumpkin vine volunteered in our orchard and some of the vines were climbing high into our avocados and citrus trees, and beginning to bear fruit. One half-developed fruit was accidentally broken and found on the ground. Subsequently we sauteed it and to our amazement it was more delicious then any zucchini we have ever eaten. It may be possible that other immature pumpkins would also provide a delicious food, but we don't know. So we will retain seeds from mature fruit of our volunteer plant for next years trials.

All is fair in love and war...

Few are there who have not heard this expression. This statement has always made me feel uncomfortable, and I would like to share my discomfort with you. I have thought of a paraphrase that makes me feel better, i.e. "ALWAYS fair in love and war". If taken seriously it would result in higher level of sincerity in love, and there would be no war.

A critical revisitation of tamarisk

As a causal observer one could conclude that there are only 2 species of Tamarix: a big tree with no leaves or little bushes, looking all about the same, with minute pointed leaves. Where in fact there are over 50 species worldwide, but none is native to America. All of the serious invasion is caused by one species Tamarix ramosissima, which was known before as T. pentandra or T. gallica in the older books. I recently had a trip on Amtrak from Riverside to Kansas City. Near the road bed there were green bushes all the way through Arizona, Texas and almost to Kansas City, and I learned that this greenery was chiefly T. ramosissima. My surprise was that I didn't realized that it has moved way up into Central Kansas. I would suppose that this dispersal was caused by the train movement carrying seeds. One could refer to it as a ribbon of tamarisk.
A tree form with no leaves is called T. aphylla (from Greek "a" - no, "phylla" - leaf). In Southern California climate conditions do not support the germination of T. aphylla seeds.

Tamarix aphylla at the UC Riverside, west of Fawcett lab building

T. aphylla does not produce a lot of flowers, but T. ramosissima is very floriferous, and heavily visited by honey bees. The extracted honey is dark in color and in the 1930s it was only sold as low price honey, known then as "baker's honey". Although today is the opposite, it is available at specialty stores at the elevated price.

A little dip into the flies among us - part 2

After getting rid of screen doors we get occasional "uninvited guests" - small reptiles getting lost and dying behind furniture. The ability to detect cadaverin odors by blow flies is remarkable - they can detect it by just few molecules and find the way in the house to oviposit on the carcass. A few blue bottle flies (Calliphora vomitoria) will appear in the house some time later and we would often wonder how did they get in. Subsequently during house-cleaning we would find the remains of a small dead animal and several empty pupal cases around it. That answers the question where flies came from. Interestingly enough is that the emergence of these flies occurs simultaneously as it is well-known in marine turtles. In marine turtles it is an auditory signal that builds up in a complete batch of eggs, whereas in flies simultaneous emergence thought to be a response to such stimuli as temperature and possibly humidity. There is a specialized organ in some flies in frontal portion of the head, which works like a balloon with hydrostatic pressure and serves to rupture the pupal case first, and secondly helps to emerge to the surface for species that pupate in the soil. It is called ptilinum.
In nature when a larger animal is decomposing there would be produced about thousand of maggots, when they are ready to pupate they burrow down into the soil from 1 to several inches deep. During warm weather after 1 to 3 weeks they are ready to emerge. At least two different occasions I have observed the emergence of blue bottle flies, at a spot where dead animals had decomposed several weeks earlier. What I have seen was gathering of dozens of active male flies before the major volume of emergence began. During this emergence many hundreds of early imago appeared, and their sex ratio seemed to be fairly equal. And here are the details: adult males that appeared before the major emergence were searching for the females. This was accomplished by pulling upward the head of emerging fly and very soon to be freed from the ground. Then they took to the air, the male holding the head of young imago with his legs and flying away with it. Sometimes within 10 to 20 feet away male would drop the imago and return to the emergence site to grab another one. I determined that the dropped fly was a young male not suitable for copulation. Many of the flying couples would disappear out of sight without dropping young imago, and I assumed that the transported imago was a female. There must be some pheromone that would indicate the gender of young imago to the adult male within a few seconds.

A little dip into the flies among us

I would like to share some personal experiences and dip into reproduction and behavior of our Dipterous neighbors.
Lets start with kitchen. We have a little plastic 1 gallon container where we collect any remainder of food for either compost or chickens. If we don't empty it daily we soon get an accumulation of Drosophila also known as pomace flies. It is better to avoid the common name fruit fly as it refers to a serious pest in pre-harvest fruit. The name Drosophila originates from Greek "dros" meaning dew. Dew could refer to the little droplets of moisture that are formed on the surface of fungal mat, on which the Drosophila flies feed. There is some sexual dimorphism, males have a dark tip on the abdomen and are usually smaller. The females tend to have several dark bands across the abdomen. Males are constantly searching for the receptive females, running after them. The copulation will last probably about 10 minutes, interrupted by a few intermittent movements of male before the contact is terminated. The one species D. melanogaster seems to be dominant in our area, however there are other species mixed with it, especially a larger species with conspicuously longer wings. Since they do not alight on one's flash, we don't feel them as annoyance, but inversely we get a feeling of unobtrusive life around us.
In our urban neighborhood the frequency of house flies is pleasantly low. We gradually eliminated the annoyance of screen doors. House flies typical breeding medium is horse and cow manure. We compost all our kitchen waste and house flies do not appear to be breeding in that environment. I spent one year in Australia car-camping out most of the time. The well-known bush fly became so numerous and aggressive to alight on your face in open-range cattle country that we had to wear hat with a vale all day long. So we got to know what the common phrase "Australian salute" meant (when you have to wave your hand in front of your face all the time). I.t was pretty difficult to distinguish bush fly from the house fly. In recent years in Riverside I had few occasions when a fly would head directly to my nostrils, and it made me wonder that if we have an incipient population of bush flies here.

Additional notes

Often times in flight, Nitidulidae of genus Carpofila could be mistaken as Drosophila.
these two are found in the same environment and both feed off of decomposing fruit.
Over the years I have enjoyed seeing Drosophila lazily meander around the compost container in my kitchen. Now and then I have seen a UFO that was Drosophila size but had a different flight pattern. This insect Inscribed circles in the air around a horizontal axis, where as the The Drosophila have a steady more or less horizontal flight. My curiosity led me to catch one in an insect net to examine it. To my surprise, this insect was no fly but a beetle. During this time of year figs with large orifices are frequently infested with large numbers of these Nitidulidae beetles.

Continued in part 2..

Disambiguation of Algarrobo

The three known in English as carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) is called in Spanish algarrobo. Carab tree pods where mentioned in the Bible in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who have wasted his inheritance and became a servant looking after pigs, and even envying them for the carob pods they ate. When the early Spanish-speaking explorers arrived to South America they saw forests of Mesquite (Prosopis sp.) with white sweet pods, and so they referred to them as algarrobo, because they were similar to European Carab tree also having sweet pods. Even today this is the common name still used in parts of South America.

Disambiguation of the word oriole and blackbird

Yellow birds members of the family Oriolidae where called orioles in 1770-1780 due to their color, because the word oriole originates from the Middle Latin variant of aureolus meaning golden. This family is confined to the Old World. Early explorers coming to North America saw birds that were yellow with black markings that resembled those they had in Old World. They were English-speaking people and so they called these birds orioles. Coming back to Europe they were bringing along specimens of these birds, and European taxonomists determined that these New World Orioles did not belong to the family Oriolidae, so they called the new family Icteridae, using a Greek word for a yellow bird ikterus (this word also applies to jaundice). Whereas family Oriolidae contains only two genera - Old World orioles and figbirds, in the New World family Icteridae there are 25 genera (7 genera are known in Southern California, represented by 10 species: Great-tailed Grackle, Red-winged Blackbird, Tricolored Blackbird, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Brewer's Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, Western Meadowlark, Scott's Oriole, Bullock's Oriole, Hooded Oriole).
In spite of the fact that word blackbird appears in a number of common names for icterid species, this word also involves an ambiguity. In Europe there is a common bird referred to in English language as a blackbird (Turdus merula). Turdus is a genus within family Turdidae, which includes many and various thrushes throughout the world. The generic name Turdus originates from Latin word turd meaning thrush, and merula comes from another Latin word merul meaning blackbird. the french name for blackbird is Merle noir.

Nuts about Nuts

Recently I have read an article Cracking the Code in Washington Post (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010900609.html)and it prompted me to share my experience with nuts as a considerably important part in my diet. To complement the price that I pay for nuts I have 2 nut trees of my own: a macadamia tree and a pecan tree. We have learned that macadamias have the shortest shelf-life of any nuts that we use due to the high content of unsaturated fatty acids. On the other extreme are cashew nuts, which even purchased in pieces have been in our refrigerator for over 4 years without any signs of rancidity or deterioration. As a general rule tropical fruit and nuts have a very short shelf-life, whereas the cashew presents the opposite case having a long storage time.

Words that specify circadian rhythms of natural organisms

During my life as a biologist I commonly have used the words nocturnal (organisms active during night), diurnal (organisms active during day), and to a lesser degree vespertine (organisms active in the evening) and crepuscular (organisms that are active during twilight, both at dawn and at dusk), but I was looking for a word that would define morning activity. So, I discovered that there is a well-known word in various Romanic languages that is matutinal (see the Wikipedia article). Becoming aware of matutinal inspired me to discuss these particular rhythms. These activities are a part of what is known as circadian rhythm (24-hours cycle of metabolism and behaviour).
Example of nocturnal organisms would be various Cereus cacti, which bloom on sun-down and remain open until the morning sun comes up. From the animal world an example of nocturnal organisms would be cats, with exception of cheetah, which is a diurnal hunter. Typically nocturnal birds will be owls, barn owls and nighthawks.
Many plants are diurnal, like California poppy. Some plants will have flowers open only during mid-day like Iceplant Mesembryanthemum (Latin generic name describes it very well: mid-day flower) (family Aizoaceae). Meerkats are typical diurnal animals.
I know of no crepuscular plants, because pollen is released only one time per day, so they are either diurnal, nocturnal, vespertine or matutinal. Among crepuscular animals could be mentioned skunks, flying foxes, which usually fly early in the evening, but feed early in the morning, larger body moths are active in the evening and can generate enough of internal heat by shivering to be active during cool mornings, particularly families Noctuidae and Sphingidae.
In tropical and subtropical regions insectivorous animals are mostly vespertine, while fruit and leaf eaters are tend to be mostly nocturnal. Many plants are vespertine as well, like 4 o'clock Mirabilis , Talinum, evening primrose - many of the species of the genus Oenothera etc.
The majority of flowering plants are matutinal, because they release pollen in the morning. As examples could serve corn, chicory and various species of flowering cacti. Pollinators of matutinal plants are closely associated with them and therefore they are also matutinal (or matinal - the term used in entomology): bees and wasps.

Personal observations on human physiology: a hint to the wise

I am sure we all have experienced a situation where a group of people are dining at a table and one person begins to cough and gag on a piece of food while eating. Immediately somebody will jump up and bring a glass of water to the inflicted person in good faith, but not realizing that it is the wrong thing to do. When food particle is drawn in trachea a reaction is almost instantaneous, the mucus immediately begins to accumulate around the foreign particle to coat it allowing it to be transported out by continuously moving minute cilia, known medically as pseudostratified ciliated columnar epithelium cells. If water is flushed over the surface of epiglottis it would remove much of the mucus, which is supposed to facilitate the further removal of this foreign object and deliver it to the throat, where it can be swallowed. Thus, in such case just let the natural forces correct the problem and don't interfere with water.

Disambiguation of Chia

Under the common name Chia 2 distinctly different plants are known: Salvia hispanica , described by Linnaeus in 1753, and Salvia columbariae, described by Bentham in 1833. Salvia hispanica is native to Central America, while Salvia columbariae is native of arid South-West of the USA and adjacent Mexico. Both used to be very important food plants, but today only Salvia hispanica remains in active production as far as we know. the choice of the scientific names contributes to confusion. Linnaeus doubtless was aware that the use S. hispanica was misleading, suggesting that it was Spanish plant, by the use of word hispanica meaning Spain. Perhaps, in my humble opinion, the only specimens he had in had were derived from Spain - a cultivated plant, not knowing that it originated from Central America. In S. columbariae was mentioned that doves (family Columbidae) were observed as frequent visitors of this plant at time of seed maturity.

Not "MY" book, but OUR book - part 3

I would like to give a credit to several dozen people, who helped with the book, but I should draw a line somewhere. So I have chosen 5 very special people. And I will start with my wife Marsia. When I met Marsia in 1968 I was curator of the UCR Herbarium. Since then she helped a lot during field trips and in particular taking the responsibility for their planning and organization. And soon after my retirement we have started extensive trips. Without having any special botanical background she was aware of the magnitude and value of this work. So Marsia took the responsibility of the peripheral support of the project's implementation starting from the very beginning to the end - from alpha to omega.
In the early days of UCR Dr. Frank Vasek joined the academic staff as the professor of botany. His field classes soon became very popular and I became his unofficial TA. Then UCR needed a herbarium and he recommended me for the curatorial position. This way with Dr. Vasek's encouragement from being hobbyist I became a professional botanist.
At the very beginning of the Santa Ana River Flora project Andrew Sanders (the present curator of the UCR Herbarium) provided us with a complete list of all known records of plant for this region. Later during the active process for about 3 years Andrew was always available to answer questions about locations and identification of plants appropriate for the book. He read through and offered suggestions concerning the manuscript.
In order to illustrate the book initially we started accumulating hand-drawings by several people, but then suddenly it came to our attention that scanning of fresh plant material would provide a quality of reproduction comparable to photography. But we still needed line-drawings to illustrate diagnostic features. So Gina Richmond showed special interest in doing detailed drawings and her illustrative material is all through the book, especially the one on the Rose family on pages 12 and 13.
Through local friends we were given recommendations for a publisher in Berkeley namely Heyday Press, now known as Heyday. The Publisher Malcolm Margolin and his team were very helpful to Danielle at the stage of book design, giving suggestions how to make it more attractive and reader-friendly. Malcolm was able to find book-sellers, who facilitated successful distribution of the book. He was not only a good publisher but also gave us personal support and encouragement.

Not "MY" book, but OUR book - part 2

The first person to join me and Marsia working on this publication was Greg Ballmer. Greg is an entomologist from UCR. He was working on feeding plants food to the larvae of butterflies called blues (family Lycaenidae) and became very interested in plants in general. His observations and interpretations of plants diversity and my desire to bring the entire local flora to the attention of local people were mutually supportive. In our book the subtle differences between plant species were shown in matrices elaborated by Greg. Commonly observed interrelations of plants and insects like formation of galls on twigs and leaves, leaf-fall and different type of damage were brought to attention and discussed throughout the book for the most part was Greg's contribution.
Then in 2002 the former engineer Danielle Svehla joint the project. She took the strongest and most constant leadership in the formation of the book, and without Danielle it would probably never be completed. Joining the project she made a spectacular shift from engineering to natural history. Her expertise qualified her to set the general plan of the book. In planning the details we needed several publishing experts to take the responsibility, so Danielle felt that she was able to do these jobs and we enabled her to do that. While being in Berkley she has cooperated with Heyday Books in setting the layout of the book. And with combination of their suggestions and her initiative it became a high quality reality.
My botanical expertise didn't include making keys, however Danielle thought that there should have been an overall key in the book. We were acquainted with UCR botanist Arlee Montalvo and she has accepted a challenge of developing a key. After a key of 20 pages was completed the book was ready for publication.
Additionally in the preparation for the second printing in 2010 she made a number of important suggestions.
To be continued...

Not "MY" book, but OUR book

After publication of the book "Flora of the Santa Ana River and Environs" in 2007 initially I was inclined to call it "my book". But after some reflection I have realized that it really is OUR book. 20 years ago my wife Marsia took extensive hand-written notes recording personal and even intimate plant-relationship resulting from my life-long experience. Dr. Gene Anderson's brief natural history guides to the Santa Ana River produced during 1970s served as starting point for this work. The river moves through 3 counties: San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange. It came to the attention of numerous local people that we have a narrow corridor of good natural history material following the river course. And it became evident that it has a great value as a potential educational and recreational site. The establishment of a trail (hiking, biking, equestrian) from San Bernardino mountains to the coast would fulfill this task. Locally a group of people formed an organization called Tri-County Conservation League (TCCL). The TCCL requested that I write a flora of the Santa Ana River. That was the guiding light that kept me going.
To be continued...

An update on Argentine ants and their environs - part 2

I had a one year visit to Australia and nearby areas in 1985-86. It was mostly a camp-out. During that year I spent about 1 week on Kangaroo Island near Adelaide, South Australia. There I have visited a small natural history research station - Pelican Lagoon. There I observed a fairly large red ant, casually resembling our local harvester ant Pogonomyrmex in size and color. This ant was referred to locally as a meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus). Thus the Argentine ant was thought to be in the same genus as australian meat ant at the time it was described by Mayr in 1868. But in 1990s it was named Linepithema humile, although remaining in the same subfamily Dolichoderinae. This was justified because the differences between these 2 species were big enough to put them in different genera.
I would like to share some personal experiences with members of this subfamily in Australia, in particular meat ants. If 2 colonies of meat ants live close there is a "war zone" formed about half way between them, in which they are dismembering their competitors. As I know all members of this subfamily are incapable of stinging.
I became aware about an occasional colony of Argentine ants around 1940 near my home in Colton. So, they were not common, but Solenopsis sp. - the fire ants, which have a sting, were common at that time. But with time the Argentine ants acquired a dominant position in areas of human dwellings being a true synanthrope. The Argentine ants have killed all the fire ants locally (as far as I know).

An update on Argentine ants and their environs

Until recently they have been known as Iridomyrmes humilis, but in early 1990s their name was changed to Linepithema humile. I recommend the collateral reading of a detailed Wikipedia article on Argentine ants.
In order to position it with other related organisms I would like to start off with the broadest category. Argentine ants make part of Phylum Arthropoda - animals with joint tube-like legs ranging in size from the Giant Sea Spider with a legs spread of 6 feet or more to the tiny mites of about 80 microns long. The next taxonomic unit for Argenitine ants will be Class Insecta. Among insects there are 2 well distinguished groups: hemimetabola - the most primitive ones with incomplete metamorphosis (grasshoppers, crickets, earwigs, aphids, true bugs, and termites)and holometabola - with complete metamorphosis (beetles, butterflies, flies, and representatives of the Order Hymenoptera, which include bees, wasps, and ants).
Both wasps and bees have a fair number of families, however all ants belong to one family Formicidae, which includes about 19 subfamilies. Argenitine ants make part of the subfamily Dolichoderinae (see Wikipedia article on this subfamily for its specific characters).
To be continued...

Helianthus tuberosus

Helianthus tuberosus originally known as Jerusalem artichoke is native to eastern United States. Historically it was known by Native Americans in many parts of Eastern North America, particularly in the Mississippi watershed, long before the European invasion of North America. Its popularity in modern America has increased in recent years due to its nutritional values. It was first introduced in Europe in 1610 according to Wikipedia and is referred to in many European languages as topinambur. The common name Jerusalem artichoke widely used in US was confusing and indefinable. The etymology of the current names also led to confusion. In late 1900s it appeared in California markets under the name of sunchoke. The word choke brought to mind the well-known thistle artichoke. Since there is a high level of ambiguity in the present common name we are suggesting a much more reasonable word for the common name: sun tuber. This name would be the most appropriate because the plant is a sunflower and the portion that is used is a tuber (not a root) and it will be consistent with its scientific name.

Illustration to APG (III)

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More about me or how I became interested in Natural History (1)

As a preteen and early teen I was actively involved in profound understanding of insects identification and life history. But later my interests extended to ornithology, facilitated by a well-known oologist - a person specializing in study of bird's eggs - Wilson C. Hanna. He noticed my avid interest in Natural History and invited me to go with him on bird collecting trips. Since Mr. Hanna wrote many reports for ornithological journals, he wanted to include the names of the plants associated with the birds, even the materials used in nest building. This oriented my thinking towards developing a greater awareness of the plant world, as well as the multitude of interactions between all groups of organisms.
For several years I was employed as a technician at the former University of California Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside. With the establishment of the new University of California Riverside campus, a herbarium was needed for the department of biological sciences. As a locally known hobbyist in botany, I was chosen to establish the herbarium by my friend and professor of botany Frank C. Vasek. This overnight leap into professional botany was one of the most exciting events of my life. I continued in this position until my retirement in 1979. Another person who has contributed to my devotion to Natural History was much revered desert scientist Edmond C. Jaeger.