Transcript for:
Basic Botany Lecture

today's lecture is going to be basic botany and there is so much information about botney that we could share today that it would take days to cover days but we have only three hours and we are going to squeeze as much into that as we possibly can so we're going to talk talk about eight basic rules of botney today these are rules that I use every day uh somebody brings in a plant for a a diagnosis what's wrong with my plant I'm using these eight rules somebody will bring in a plant and say what place should I put this plant in my yard where where will it grow best I use these eight basic rules of botany if someone wants additional information about how to garden or landscape in the desert I'm always using these a basic rules my objective today is to start you on the path of being able to diagnose plant problems that's more common than any other question that I get as a professional horticulturist what is wrong with my plant what is killing my plant well sometimes it might be a disease or maybe there's an insect there but usually it boils down to other things like soils or climate or maybe just the way that we are treating that plant in our management styles so as we study these eight basic rules of botney I'm hoping that you'll be able to get a feel for understanding the plant and its relationship to the soil and to the water issues that it affects so with that let's get started a little bit about myself I have been an extension agent for an agriculture for uh since 1981 now 35 years people ask me all the time Rick when are you going to retire and I tell them as long as I've got my health and as long as I'm having fun why retire and so I am still in place I have a Bachelor of Science and biology and a master's degree in plant protection which means I got to study animology and weed science and soils and water and all kinds of things it was fascinating experience for me and it was perfect training for what I do today uh I my main responsibility is Horticultural research and education uh countywide and um they require me to bring research-based information and my main area of Interest people find a little weird when they find out about me my main area of interest is sick plants if you bring me a healthy plant I'm bored to tears oh this is very nice but if you bring me a sick plant I am absolutely enthralled and so I don't know maybe that's a quirk of my nature or a personality deficit or something I don't know but I really enjoy working with plants that are sick what are the learning objectives for the day number one I want you to be able to tell the difference between monocots diots and conifers uh I want you to be able to describe the three major life cycles of plants three major life Cy cycles of plants I want you to be able to describe the function of roots leaves and stems how do they work how are they built and what affects them the four uh growing points in a plant there are four places where a plant grows uh tell while a balance of energy is critical don't get scared on that we're not going to do any major calculus uh equations and that but uh we it is important to know this balance of energy issue and I want you to be able to use what you've learned today in a practical way so that's what we're going to start and what we're going to accomplish rule number one the plant kingdom is highly diverse you say D I know that that's pretty simplistic but the issue is this because of the diversity of the plant kingdom what works for one type of plant isn't necessarily going to work for another and because of that diversity we need to have a broad knowledge about across the plant kingdom of how it works number two is is that because of this diversity no one disease no one insect is going to kill every plant in your yard I know I've heard that question many times my mosquite tree my sorro tree and my palm tree are all dying in my yard what insect is killing them or what disease no that's not the way it works because palm trees and mosquite trees and all of the other trees are so much so different from each other that one disease or one insect isn't going to attack attack all of them that's a very important point and the first practical take-home message today is when we see a plant going down getting sick or struggling don't look for just one thing look across the entire growing condition the environment that that plant is growing in most of the plant kingdom is divided into divisions or Fila that's just the Latin names and we're not going to spend time on those most of those divisions of the plant kingdom are algae or fungi or U other types of plants that we normally we we know normally grow algae as a decorative plant in the yard right so we don't really worry too much about that what we're more concerned about is the division of the plant kingdom which is called the flowering plants plants that produce flowers and have vessels or tubes that conduct fluids up and down the Plant they're the ones that are the showest they're the ones that give us the shade they're the ones that give us the fruit they're the ones that give us vegetable crops for our salads on the table and so we focus mainly on these higher plants vascular simply means that they have vessels or tubes think soda straws inside that plant water and nutrients going up sugar and other Energy Products from the leaves coming down and if you can imagine those that that soda straw image in your mind you'll begin to understand a lot of the important parts that we have to understand about these plants so we're going to focus mainly on the conifers and on the flowering plants conifers really don't the pine trees the arbites the junipers they don't really have showy flowers they don't have pretty red flowers like a rose bush does or like a ban via or like citrus they have a different reproductive style and of course the flowering plants is the biggest group that we we deal with this diversity is both beneficial for the reasons that we've talked about and it is also a challenge you think about a a human physician they only have to know one species of animal a veterinarian is a little bit more complex because they they work on several different species of animals but in the plant kingdom those of us who are treating and diagnosing plant problems need to understand a lot of different concepts and we have to know how those plants deal in their environment that's one of the things that we're going to be doing today let's start off by looking at the conifers the pine trees they produce their seeds in cones here is a bristle cone pine cone reproductive structure it's different from all of the other plants that we would grow in our yard yards uh we don't grow bristle cone Pines in panal County they're elevation of 12,000 ft but it's a nice big cone much bigger than the Aleppo pine cone and so it's easier to see but the principle is the same on these cones the seeds form down in the B base the bottom of these seed leaves in the cone in fact if you run your finger down inside you can feel the little indentation where the seed uh developed and eventually fell out from when it reaches the appropriate time and some cones are are open after fire and some cones at temperature and it's all different eventually these seed leaves pop open and the and the seeds which are loose inside just blow out in the wind that's how it gets separated out and all Pines no matter whether it's high elevation Pines or low elevation Pines all have that same basic structure so we need to understand that it produces its seeds and cones and because of that um we have to treat them differently um when we plant Pines for uh propagation or if we're going to handle them in the yard has requires some different handling the the leaves are shaped like needles or scales I think we all are familiar with pine needles and they are generally slower in their growth habits than flowering plants so if I am going to purchase a home plant a landscape and turn that home over for profit in a short period of time I do not want to plant junipers or Pines they grow very slowly I'm going to want it something that grows a little faster so I can get value in my landscape Pines junipers tend to grow slower than the flowering plants and because of that they can pests and diseases sometimes can catch up with them growth and development is different in the flowering plants they have a flowering pants plants have a totally different style of growth and so we just need to recognize the difference between uh conifers and the flowering plants so let's um start off by introducing a few terms uh this is a crosssection of a pine needle crosssection of a pine needle the interior part of the needle is called the mesop you'll want to remember that term because it'll pop up in some other places as we start talking about plant problems meso means middle Phil means leaf and so mesop simply is the part of the leaf that is between the upper and the lower epidermal layers that keep what supposed to be in in and what supposed to be out out here is is the epidermal layer here outside simply a layer of cells that are usually have a hard outside uh structure that keep uh that give rigidity to the to the plant uh uh uh tissue and also at the same time uh resists the entrance of diseases and um and also helps prevent desiccation of the needle and of the leaf in the flowering plants so we have the epidermal layer we have the V the mesop inside the the mesop is the vascular system this system of tubes soda straws that help move fluids from one part of the plant to the other a sto or plural is stomata this simply represents holes that are in the leaf that allow fluids water inside the plant to evaporate and move out into the atmosphere we'll talk more about that process in just a minute what I really want to focus on is this whole issue of resin canals because conifers are unique in that they have resin uh everyone is familiar with pine sap you've been up in the forest and you picked up a piece of lumber and your hands Come Away sticky it gets in your hair on the clothes and you say oh no this stuff I'll never get off and so you go rub your hand or your clothes or I'll stop short of saying the hair and some kind of sand to helpy rub it off you know but uh conifers are typical to have resin in them and those resin um fluids are contained in canals or tubes and this is important because it's a protection to the plant it's very important for the protection of the plant everyone I believe is familiar with the bark Beetle issue that we've had in Arizona now for a number of years uh we've had a a huge explosion in bark Beetle populations the IPS genus of beetle IPS and these beetles are very uh common in the mid and higher elevations of the state very common but the trees have a natural protection as these beetles bore into the tissue and begin feeding right underneath the bark if there is sufficient resin in those canals they will chew through as they chew through a canal the resin comes out and encapsulates them goes around them and blocks their breathing and they die and the tree is protected but if there is insufficient resin in that tree for one reason or another then those beetles just absolutely go to town reproduce quickly and eventually that tree is dead when we are in the midst of a drought there's insufficient water for the trees and the insects have a Haiti when it's raining like it is now in the mountains and there is sufficient water for the trees the damage is much less fortunately now you say how why does that apply to us here in panal County we are not at 5,000 FT elevation when it's 120 we wished we were at 5,000 or higher don't we but we are in the low desert and the engraver beetle is not typically a problem for us except we have now found a population of the IPS and Graver Beetle proliferating and Tucson at about, 19900 FT elevation how did that happen you say well the beetle we hypothesize was brought down from higher elevations and firewood and stacked up against an Aleppo Pine or an Afghanistan Pine or a Canary Island pine or whatever and allowed that population to invade we said to ourselves they'll never survive our summers they have survived our summers so while we do not have we do not have let me re reemphasize that we do not have IPS engraver beetles in panel County at the lower elevations we Never Say Never And so Master Garder volunteers horticulturists who are wanting to be in the know professionals who work for the nurseries need to be aware that there's always a potential and if there is any sightings of the entrance or exit holes or the engraver tunnels on Pines or junipers we want to know we want you to be on the lookout so if I live in pacon or sholo or Flag Staff or on top of Mount Lemon and I want to protect my trees from Engraving beetles what should I do I should arrogate exactly right so as an example now I've taught you some scientific principles and I've given you a practical application of that principle and now you understand the anatomy of a pine needle and the resin canals and why those are so important and how we can advise individuals to watch for and if we find that particular problem solve what could be a huge issue for those who have Pines and junipers in their yards questions you're going to see that pattern throughout this course many times teach you a scientific principle give you a practical application please I don't know if it applies here but um over irrigating can be a problem as well over irrigating can be a problem as well that is correct and when we talk about soils and irrigation this I think it's next week or if not very very soon we're going to focus on that particular issue exactly right you are right on target all right let's talk about the flowering plants flowering plants are also very diverse maybe even more diverse than the conifers because we have two major divisions of the flowering plants again flower or flowering plants or we would call them um uh plants that uh produce flowers for Reproductive structures for Reproductive purposes are divided up into two groups one are what we call the monocot leading plants which include the Palms the grasses the sges and the dcod leing plants which should be like apples peaches pears beans squash a a cod eeden is a the storage structure inside of a seed what where the plant stores energy for the baby plant the embryo in each seed if we take a bean seed and soak it in water and carefully peel off the outer covering of the seed and carefully split it in two the seed will split into two equal hands Hales those two halves are calans that's the storage part of the seed it's where energy is stored to get that little plant going to keep it going until it gets its roots in the ground and leaves in the air the Cod leadens so if a plant has two codons like beans and Peas split pea soup then we call it a dcod d meaning two if it only has one codal like corn we call it a mono Coden mono meaning one if you take a corn seed and soak it and peel off the outside covering carefully you will not be able to split that seed into two equal halves there's only one there monocot and dicodin we even will use such words as monod ladness to describe a particular type of plant or diod leadous plants but most of us just shorten it to monocot diot one of the things that I want you to do today when you go home is to be able to ident identify the plants that you see monocot dcot monocot dcot and when we get through here giving you the characteristics of the two types you'll find that it'll be easy to do in fact it becomes a game monocot dcot monocot dcot monocot and you'll be able and I don't encourage you to do that while you're driving okay not when you're driving but when you you can f Focus your attention so how do we tell the difference between those two and it's very important to be able to do that and I'll show you why in a minute the characteristics of a monocot Alan plant are one that the when you do a crosssection of the stem you find that the vessels those tubes that condu water and sugars are in a bundle they're clumped together and they're scattered throughout the stem of the plant if I take a crosssection of a palm tree I can feel with my hands those bundles of tubes because they have a thicker cell wall and because of that they're stiffer the tissue around them is lot thinner walled and dries out easily when I first cut this piece of wood it was smooth all the way across I couldn't feel feel but now because the small thin walled cells have shrunk I can feel the prickles of the vascular bundles sticking out from the trunk so as I pass this around or as you consider a palm in the section in the future I want you to be able to feel the differences between this and say a diot plant that I'll show you in just a minute it's important to understand that the vascular bundles are scattered throughout the trunk of the tree and not just in one particular place monocot alans will have the um the vascular bundles those tubes or soda straws in bundles scattered throughout the stem they also have their flower parts in groups of Threes three petals three seel three reproductive parts or multiples of three 3 6 9 12 15 18 if I want to identify a particular plant it's usually not considered good form to walk into somebody's yard and cut through with a saw to see what the bundle structures look like That's pretty drastic and they probably would not be too happy with that so I really can't use that technique to identify a monocot plant I can look at the flower parts but it takes time to sit there and count the each of the pieces now while that's scientifically appropriate some people start start to wonder about our mentality and our Lucidity and our connections to retire to to reality when we're looking at this flower and saying one 2 3 4 five they start wondering what we're doing so I typically don't like to use that technique even though it is scientifically appro I can also take a seed and I like I explained before take the seed coat off and count the Cod leadens but when I do that it kill s the seed and I can't use that so the easiest way and the most simple way is to just see where the veins and the leaves are and monocot plants Palms grasses sedges sweet corn uh the veins are all parallel so if I take out this this leaf that I cut off of my Iris plant this morning and I take the leaf and I start peeling it down it will come off in Easy removed Parts because the veins are parallel with each other they're parallel with each other if and we'll compare that with a dcot leaden plant shortly where we will see that they have a different structure uh here is a palm leaf I'm not going to pass it around because it's got prickles on the side and I've already damaged my finger this morning but if you want to look at it at the break you'll see that the veins in this palm trees leaf are all parallel and I could do the same kind of thing with this Leaf as I do with the iris Leaf I can uh make them so that they um uh will can separate out into strips that's been very valuable over the period of time for of humanity because we often in our past have woven baskets out of monocot plants bull rushes in the old world we even have some of that yucka here in this world the yucka and the bear grass I I have a a dear friend over on the toono atam reservation who often times will build a basket when she needs a little extra spending money and come in and say Rick will you buy my basket and of course I'm becoming quite a connoisseur now of Native American baskets that's very beautiful work to me very utilitarian but very particular she is about the plants she is very careful in the pieces that she selects to weave her baskets and she is very careful in how she strips out those sections that she eventually is going to weave together and uh is very useful to them the ancient American cultures have used weaving of baskets for a lot they don't use a lot of um mon of dicodon plants they like those monocot plants because the sections weave together very tight and it's all because these veins are parallel so as you're Drive no not while you're driving while you're looking at plants and you see a plant that has a parallel veins you can immediately in your mind say monocot on the other hand when we look look at diod leading plants we have a different structure again and take a cross-section of the stem we will see that the tubes are arranged in circles inside this is a uh um a a dcot Leen plant uh Chinese pistache that has a disease in it uh the disease is uh verticillium Wilt which we'll talk when we talk about we'll talk about it when we get into into diseases but what I just want you to see today is is to feel how smooth that is and notice that there is a different structure right underneath the bark you'll see that there are different types of tubes and so those tubes are arranged in circles in rings inside of the plant diot plants have um their vessels in rings and circles inside the in the in the trunk they have flower parts are usually four or five 5 10 15 20 they have two calans as we've previous discussed and they have net bed leaves their Leaf vein are netlike here is a can of leaf that I cut out of my garden this morning and you'll see that the the veins are not parallel they go in different directions and because of that there it's impossible to make those split those leaves up into something that can be um uh can be woven here is hoba same kind of thing I want you to look at these veins and see if you can tell that these veins are not paralel um I've also got some Lantana net leafed veined and I even took a terminal off of my citrus tree this morning and again there's just no way that there those veins are parallel they're all cross netted so when you see a tree like a mosquite or a citrus or other um diod leing plants you can tell them immediately by the netted vein U arrangement of the veins and the leaves monocots have parallel veined leaves dians have netted vein leaves so why is that important why am I spending so much time on that today well let's talk about these tubes we need to talk about these tubes just a little bit before we answer that question in a diot aladan plant such as on your left you will see that the center part of the stem is a group of cells that are thin walled that are used for storage of water and other nutrients water and nutrients are stored in the pith and then just outside of the pith is a a type of a cell that is called xylm x y l m and the xylem tubes conduct water and minerals from The Roots out to the leaves goes from the roots to the leaves the flum PHL OEM is on the outside in a daden plant of the what we call the cambium layer the cambium layer is a place where growth can occur it's where cells divide where stems get bigger or when branches get thicker and the cambium layer is a place where growth can occur so we said there were four places where growth could occur in a plant what's the first one we've talked about the cambium layer okay need to remember cambium layer on the inside of the cambium layer are water conducting tubes on the outside of the cambium layer and dichot aladen plants is the sugar conducting tubes energy from the leaves down to the roots water on the inside sugar on the outside in the monocot plants they are still arranged in that order flum on the outside xylm on the inside but they're again in these bundles and the cambium layer is right between those two layers of cells in the bundles which is how we add more tubes to that bundle so so we have again the same structure we have sugar conducting tubes the Flo on the outside in a monocot plant and the dcot excuse me and the um xylm tissue on pointed towards the inside of that stem always is that way with a layer of cambium right down the middle and that stem swells as it adds the these tubes and it adds these storage cells that trunk can get bigger and bigger and bigger any questions now why you say are we doing that let me give you a little bit clearer picture on the left is that a monocot or a dcot okay are the bundles scattered so that makes it a monocot this is an actual photograph crosssection of a monocot stem you can see the small green areas in between the bundles those are the storage cells and then we have the bundles the xylm is always going to be pointed towards the inside of the stem the Flo is always on the outside of the stem in a diot aladen plant we have the storage cells still here but here are the xylem separated by a little section of cambium and a eyebrow of flum tissue so here's the flum the cambium and these big old thick walled cells like water pipes that carry water from the roots up to the top of the stem again in a dcod leading plant they're in rings in monocot eing plants they're in bundles before I talk about life cycles of plants let me back up again wrong way let me give you an opportunity now to diagnose a plant problem an opportunity to diagnose plant problem this is a real life situation it's one of the first situations that I faced when I started as a County Extension agent the town of Florence wanted to beautify Main Street and they wanted to plant ash trees ash trees are monocots or dcot do they have parallel veins or do they have netted veins veins netted veins so it makes it a dcot okay so now you know the structure of the stem you know the structure of the stem they planted these trees along ma along Main Street to beautify and they were doing very well they were in a strip of of ground Long Street and uh they had planted grass underneath it had an irrigation system and everything and everything was working well they called me one day in my office in kasag Grande and said uh we have a problem here every single one of our ash trees are dying can you come see what the problem is we don't know whether it's a disease or whether it's an insect that usually is first thing they say we think it's a disease or an insect when in reality it could be a whole host of other things so I went I I asked him a few questions over the phone what's your watering how what's your fertilizer what I couldn't find anything at fault they were watering appropriately had the right schedule they had the right fertilization schedule everything should been perfect but every one of those trees they said was dying so I went over to Florence and sure enough when I got to the site where they were where these trees were growing they were all wilting down they were the leaves were dry Brown the wood was dead and I could tell from a from a one glance that it was every single tree in that row every single tree in that row so those of you who are familiar with plants are already questioning this in your mind how can this be because the plant kingdom is so diverse and even there is differences between the one tree in the spe in the species and another tree in the species and so diseases and insects should not take out the entire row all at the same time usually happens over a period of time but all of them were dead at the same time and in the same symptom same series of symptoms and probably in the same way so I had leaves that were wilted and turning brown at the top the whole canopy I said to myself this is a drought symptom this tree is not getting enough water so I got down on my hands and knees and I checked the soil under inside the grass and I'll show you how to do that when we talk about soils and water I checked the soil I probed the soil and there was plenty of water in there if there was anything it might have been too much water but when I checked the roots it wasn't that wasn't the problem The Roots were not dead they were still alive at least somewhat okay so what could be some of the possibilities that I was dealing with there number one I've already found out that they were fertilizing correctly number two I found that there was plenty of water so they shouldn't have gone into a drought symptom number three is is that the grass was perfectly healthy and I said to myself maybe the grass is taking all the water but when I probe down below the root zone of the grass the soil was still moist where those roots of those trees were so it wasn't a water problem caused by the grass I said to myself what in the world and then it struck me I figured it out I knew what the problem was has anybody figured out what the problem could possibly be think about the structure of a diot plant where is are the tubes okay what tubes are on the outside the tubes that conduct sugars from the leaves to the roots absolutely right so where are those tubes found just underneath the bark what is a common Landscaping tool that we use to control weeds and grass lawnmower yeah we use the lawnmower but yeah well we don't use trade names in this in the room a string trimmer so that's exactly right I got down and I pulled that grass back and there had gashed that trunk of those young trees all the way around had cut through the bark cut through the flum and cut through the cambium growth area which gives the tree its ability to heal itself down to these thick walled xylon tubes and this of course is a herbaceous plant this is a small very this would be like a dandelion plant very fragile but you can imagine in a tree that those V those um xylm tissue is very there there's a lot of them and they have thick walls they're very hard makes a perfect anvil for cutting out the weeds around those trees they had girdled every single one of them to the point where the tree could not heal itself so why was it giving a drought symptom then why was it a drought symptom when it wasn't the drought when it wasn't the water tubes that were cut what it happened you see is they when they cut the food tubes it starved the roots and they cease to function and stop picking up water and we see a drought symptom manifest we will talk in the future about diseases of roots that cause exact same symptom and what's the first thing we do when we see leaves that are welting we put water on them but in reality these diseases only flourish in super wet soils so sometimes adding extra water where we see a drought symptom makes things worse though I'm hoping you begin to see a pattern here that as we work our way through these series of classes we're going to build on scientific principle on top of scientific principle and give you a big picture so that you're able to um to function as a plant diagnostician and feel comfortable with what you're doing so here's the final question before we leave this particular discussion am I going to experience string trimmer blight on a palm tree why not because they're spread out through all I can use the the trunk of a palm tree all day long as an anvil for a string trimmer now I might damage the outside a little bit over period of time which is not considered good form in Horticultural Circle so most landscapers do not you do this they they understand the importance of not doing that but if I slip with my string trimmer around my apple tree I could kill that tree but if I slip with my string ring trimmer around my palm tree I don't worry so much make sense want to before we take a break let's talk a little bit about life cycles of plants there are three different types of plants and it's important to understand that number one there are plants that live their entire lives in one year the seed germinates the plant grows they flower and they produce seeds in one year we call them annual plants there are those plants that live for many years they grow the seed uh germinates they begin growing and they will grow for several years we call those perennials and there are a type of plants that grow in two years they seed germinates the plant grows usually forms a low growing rosette of leaves at the just on top of the ground and then on the second year sends up the seed stock think dandelion in lawns we can control dandelion in lawns by several mechanisms number one we can get a uh one of these long uh weed probes and we can get down on our hands and knees or sit in a chair and with an umbrella and a a lemonade in the pocket and just insert and pop those roots and pull them out or we can use a lenium knife a short a hand wooden handle a hooked beak uh knife which is what I like to use and then cut below the crown of the plant um that kills the plant or if we are not really into that labor intensive and we don't mind using chemistry we can indeed take out a dcod leading plant like dandelion in a grass lawn without hurting the lawn we call those selective weed killers but to able to do that I have to know whether a plant is a monocot or a dcot which is one reason why we're focusing on this a monocott weed can be killed in a dcod leading hedge I can take ra I can take Bermudagrass out of a uous hedge by spraying over the top with fluazifop methyl which is a type of weed killer selective for Grassy weeds monocots doesn't affect diecuts on the other hand I can take out a diod leaden weed from a monod leaden lawn very easily but I've got to be able to know what's a monocot and what's a dcot and then I got to read the label to make sure I got the right material because it's not considered good form in Horticultural um circles to use an herbicide to kill Bermuda grass when in reality it kills broad leaves because if I were to spray Bermudagrass with a broadleaf weed killer in a you want them as hedge the grass would survive and the Hedge would die and that becomes very expensive to the homeowner and if we are in business that usually we lose an account and if we are the homeowner ourselves we say to ourselves with much chrin I really made a mistake and now I have to pay for it so this concept of knowing monocots and dicots and and the life cycles together is very important because there are annual weeds and there are perennial weeds and to kill annual weeds is one thing but to kill perennial weeds is a totally different issue and that will'll discuss when we have our class on Weeds and weed control but I just wanted to introduce this concept of annuals perennials and bials that is important so let me just start by saying that the principal function for um leaves is to absorb sunlight for the manufacturing of sugars that's the process of photosynthesis sugars are made up of carbon hydrogen and oxygen the hydrogen and much of the oxygen will come from water carbon comes from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere I'll show you in a minute how those get into the plant but the bottom line important thing to remember is is that the energy that that plants used to grow is going to come through the life processes that begin again with photosynthesis the energy involved in that so what we are going to try and do today is to have an understanding that leaves Capt that light and have openings that allow Water and Air to come and go Water and Air to come and go that's really important and one of the biggest challenges that we have to correct uh photosynthesis in the plant is when we cut off too many branches and Destroy too many leaves we see that violation all of the time by the end of today's class I hope that you'll see how several of these rules integrate together to help us to understand that point more so let's start with a cross-section of a leaf here this is just a standard Leaf a flowering plant leaf if you're familiar with cuticle we saw that word cuticle earlier when we looked at the pine needles and a cuticle is simply a waxy layer that helps the epidermis the layer of cells at the surface of the plant leaf top and bottom to keep things out that need to be kept out and keep things in that should be in you can recognize the cuticle easily by thinking about a citrus leaf that has that glossy waxy feel that's the cuticle it covers and envelops the epidermal layer we have an upper epidermis and we have a lower epidermis and we have a cuticle layer on the bottom as well as on the top now when we come inside the epidermal layers and we start function seeing the mesop cells those cells come in various varieties and in a couple of different structures the Palisade panma cells are cells that are stacked on top of each other like and form a column like a log and a and a fort like and a palisade and those cells stacked on top of each other with no spaces between them give that leaf a lot of strength that leaf has to stand up during wind during heavy sunlight it has to stand up to um drying and and um it has to stand up to heat and so that that needs a lot of strength because if a leaf is wilted hanging down it's not oriented towards the sun and the efficiency of that leaf is is reduced greatly but if that leaf is standing up straight intersecting the Sun and we have equal access of that sun no shaded areas but equal access to the sun then it works more efficiently so we want that leaf to be standing out straight and it's that palisade layer full of water that gives it the strength when that leaf begins to lose water and the cells begin to shrink is when the leaf begins to wilt to hang down imagine a ziplock bag I take a Ziploc plastic bag and I take it over to the sink and I fill it brim full of water and carefully zip it tight and that bag is full and plump I can set it on the counter and I can roll it around because it's got a lot of pressure inside pushing out to cause that bag to to push out against its contain the container Edge same thing in a cell when it's full of water that water is pushing out against the cell wall and put gives it strength there's pressure on the wall which causes that cell to be pushed out and strong if I take that Ziploc bag unzip it pour out half the water and rezip it then it sits on the counter and gets flat like a pancake and to roll it around takes a lot of energy same kind of things happening inside the cell when it's short of water there that pressure inside pushing out against the cell wall is greatly lessened greatly reduced and because of that it tends to collapse in on itself and we see the droop of the wilt and so it is important to make maintain this internal pressure to keep the leaf working at its peak efficiency the word that we use and I don't have it on the slide is turer pressure t r g o r if you ever see that in the literature that's that internal pressure pushing out against a cell wall that gives it rigidity and strength underneath the Palisade pinka layer and pinka is just the name of a different type of a cell it's kind of like a storage cell there are several different types of cells and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Cell Biology today but the prinka is a storage cell and the palisade layer is um is arranged in columns with no spaces in between it the spongy parena same kinds of cells but they're arranged a little bit differently in between the layers of the cells are are air pockets space where there's nothing but air and those are essential to the plant they're always on the bottom end because we don't need the strength on the bottom this had this bottom part of the leaf has a different function and that is to Aid in the movement of water through the plant so we have water absorbed by The Roots the Roots suck in water and create a pressure that pushes water up the tubes the xylon isues and it'll and depending upon the plant it can push water up the stem so far and in small short growing plants that may be sufficient but when we're talking pine trees or redwoods or even mosquite trees that is insufficient to get water from the ground up the stem up the trunk and out to the leaves we have to keep water in those leaves to keep the pressure the turer pressure going to keep it up we need to keep those leaves standing out so we've got to get water out to those leaves continually and the pressure that of roots create by sucking in water and pushing it up the stem is insufficient to get that water all the way out to those leaves at at the topmost part of the plant there's another process that's going on that is is that every time in the process of of um of water moving up the up the stem up the tubes um there is a drop of water for every drop that comes in there's a drop that has to go out and what happens is is that the water moves across the cell membrane the cell wall into these air pockets and evaporates it goes from a liquid that we find inside the cell to a gas which we find in the air pockets and because water molecules tend to stick together you uh you put a drop of water on the table and you try to move it around with a sponge you'll find that the water tends to spread out in a film it tends to hold together the water molecules hold together that's why water runs down a river because the molecules electronically are attached together they tend to hold on to each other and when one moves the whole chain moves behind them uh think about the water coming out the tap it doesn't spray unless you got a special kind of nozzle it sprays out it doesn't spray out an individual drops it runs out in a stream when you suck water up a straw the water tends to hold together it doesn't come out one molecule at a time unless there's a problem with your straw it tends to hold together when I put a drop of water on the table and put my finger in it I can gradually if I slowly move my finger the water will attach itself on be attracted to my finger and it will follow my fing finger in a trail until the attraction of the tabletop is greater than the attraction to my finger in which case I lose that traction it pops loose and stays behind as a drop on the table I think I think all of us can relate to this um uh characteristic of the water molecule that tends to hold on to its neighbor and pull it like a chain like a train moving down the track and that's what's happening in these leaves as the water comes out of the cell and evaporates it pulls the next one up to it and then that next molecule comes through the membrane and evaporates and so we have this constant movement of water from inside the tubes into these air spaces in the leaves and that's really really critical because not only do we have the roots pushing water up but we also have the leaves and the loss of water through the leaves pulling water up and we can take water from the ground and to the highest tree using those two methods of movement that's in critical that process is critical because dissolve in the water are the nutrients that the leaves need for building blocks to create the chemistry that they need so that movement of water just of from nutrition alone is absolutely critical this process of movement of water through the leaf into the air pockets out through the stomates or the holes in the bottom of the leaves is called the process of transpiration transpiration and many of the problems that we encounter in desert plants why they fail is because the process of transpiration has failed for one reason or another around these stomates these these holes in the leaf are cells called guard cells the guard cells are interesting in that when there is plenty of water in the tree or in the plant those cells get smaller they shrink you would think if they were full of water they would be plump but they don't they have an opposite response when there's plenty of water they shrink and when they shrink they open up that hole and allow um oxygen which is a waste product of carbon of photosynthesis to exit out and carbon dioxide to go into the plant that air exchange is very important oxygen out carbon dioxide in and it all is a function of transpiration because if the plant runs short of water these guard cells swell and shut the door opposite reaction what we would think guard cells do things their own way they have their own ability their own chemistry their own process and it's absolutely a fascinating process but not one that we're going to spend time today on so this is a cross typical crosssection of a diot leaf in the this process of transpiration provides water to the pl plant as we've just talked about it is a process by which a plant loses water primarily through the leaf stomata process by which the plant loses water it has to lose water otherwise we can't pull water and nutrients up into the leaves so there has to be this Chain Reaction this pull and and plants that have insufficient water for transpiration really have problems uses about 90% of the water that the roots pick up about 90% now we have high water use plants like mulberry trees that 90% of it's using a lot of water to keep itself healthy compared with say a ag GOI or a mosquite tree which are low water use plants still 90% % of the water is used in transp transpiration but it's a much slower process and it uses much less water much less water about 10% is used in the chemical reactions inside the plant and it also is this transport of of minerals which is key the amount of water lost from the plant depends on several environmental conditions temperature humidity and wind or air movement wind especially hot dry wind blowing along the surfaces of a leaf tend to grab hold of that water molecule in those air pockets and suck it out which increases the movement of water and if the leaf tends to to uh lose water faster than it's than it's picking it up than it's being replenished those guard cells swell and shut down and the leaf wilts sometimes we see that in the desert with squash plants we will have them early in the morning healthy and looking good the leaves are all straightened out by the end of the day they're all limp down but even if we don't water them at night if there's plenty of water in the soil they still do that but next morning they're all healthy and happy again and it's simply that the guard cells swell up and cause that leaf to to shut down so it doesn't lose too much water so air movement is absolutely critical to theil to the amount of water so if I have I'm in the middle of a summer and I've got a medium to high water use plant like a citrus tree or an ash tree and I'm seeing the the hot dry winds blowing through I'm thinking to myself I may need to adjust my irrigation schedule just a little bit to compensate but there are other factors this issue of temperature and humidity is also very critical so as we look at relative humidity the amount of water vapor in air it varies from Year from month the month within the year and from year to year for that matter we have hot dry years and we'll have a good Monsoon year the next year and that relative humidity in the air is important to the plant and to our management because the hotter the temperature and the drier the air the higher the water demand is going to be in January after we've and when we've got relatively cool temperatures and we've been getting some of these winter storms that come through and the relative humidity percentage maybe 50% or higher some it maybe close to 90% it's a lot less demanding than when we are at 120 with 5% 2% or sometimes 0% humidity why is that you say what works on the principle of diffusion diffusion is one of those chemical terms that we said we would never ever use again when we walked out of high school chemistry that last day but all of a sudden here it comes back to B again I have got to think about that yes we do the process of diffusion is simply this that a gas moves from a place of high concentration to low concentration until the two locations are equal see some of you are remembering your laws from chemistry Lynn thank you very much for understanding diffusion is simply the movement of a gas from a high con place of high concentration to a low concentration all right so let me give you an example my wife Lexi Lynn um absolutely loves to go out on dates we have a date night every week Friday night is date night and sometimes we have discussions and give and take on what is going to constitute a dat date night I am one one hand absolutely love cheap dates Lexi Lynn let's go down to McDonald's tonight and have a hamburger and then we'll come home for date night that doesn't fly very often she would prefer on the other hand to dress up nice and go to a nice restaurant and in the process of get dressing up she has this process that she goes through one of which is that she has a favorite perfume and there's usually a little dab here and you I'm not going to go into that um where all that you know how many dabs and you know because I don't pay much attention to that stuff but um she has a favorite perfume and it sits up on the cabinet in the master bathroom uh you need to know that we over the years uh were blessed with six children three boys and three girls and um and one time when we went out on a date night she we was a dress up night wasn't a McDonald's night and uh she uh put on some perfume now who knows what happened but somehow in the time that we left to the time that we came back there was a definite a of perfume throughout the house and as soon as we walked in the door she said who's been in my perfume front door who's been in my perfume Christie says not me Mom she's probably 12 Craig says he's 11 I wouldn't be caught dead in that stuff and on down through the line christe excuse me ktie and Jeff and Matt and Dana was a baby at that time so I couldn't blame Dana poor Dana so uh bottom line is we never found out who was into the perfume maybe Lexi land just left it the lid open when she left but anyway inside that perfume bottle was a liquid perfume that when the lid was off started to evaporate and it was a high concentration in that bottle so it tended the gas after it evaporated diffused out of the high concentration into this huge atmosphere inside the house and tried to reach an equilibrium of the gas inside the bottle and the gas inside the house you all know how that's going to turn out eventually that bottle's going to be empty because it never is going to reach an equilibrium especially with an air conditioning going that's blowing air out the door so fortunately we got back in time that we were able to put the lid back on and stop that process of diffusion compare that with what's going on inside the leaf inside the leaf we have these air pockets with almost 100% humidity because the water is evaporating continually day and night into those air pockets and then it is escaping out through those holes into the atmosphere if I thought the atmosphere inside the home was big now think about the entire ire World think about the whole world if if we're not even thinking about the whole world think about all the air that is in Santan Valley alone and all the plants that we have and the process of transpiration there's never going to be equilibrium especially when there's zero to or 5% humidity so I've got high temperatures and low humidity and that plant is desperately trying to keep itself cool through the process of transpiration transpiration is its way of cooling it's like an evaporative cooler water coming through a pad and an evaporative cooler tends to cool the air we blow that inside the house so transpiration not only moves materials inside the plant but it also helps keep the plant cool that's why 90% % of the water that a plant picks up is it it comes out through the holes it's in a process to cool itself especially in the summertime what's the hottest and the driest month of the year June and July when do most people tend to go on on vacations I'm going to San Diego or I'm going to Flagstaff or if I'm a winter visitor I'm leaving in April and coming back in October why are my plants dying what disease or insect it might be just that they ran short of water because nobody's there to check the irrigation system or we forget an irrigation and that plant runs dry and we lose turer pressure so we can't trans transm MIT water and nutrients and we certainly are not cooling it at the most efficient so June and early July are the times where we see most damage to the plant because of inappropriate aration and it's simply because of this process of transpiration that takes place and the relatively relative humidity that is associated with it B basically relative humidity is simply the process by which we are moving uh that requires the movement of water within the plant within the plant in jul in January it's not a big deal in June it is a big deal rule number three at the B of every leaf there is a bud now a bud is a baby Leaf in the making that's where a point of growth occurs It Grow occurs in the um in the uh the buds of the plant there are buds at the terminal we call them terminal Buds and there are buds in the axles of leaf ax here's the stem here's the leaf the axle is right down where the leaf meets the stem there a there's a Bud there and sometimes in some many plants there will be other buds that won't be there they'll be in the in the wood but they're all latent they're not ready to to go to move so uh we often times see growth that occurs mostly from these buds that are in the in the Axel of the leaves each Leaf will have one or more bud at the point where the pedol or the leaf stem attaches the leaf to the branch and um we need to also understand that compound leaves are different from um simple leaves a simple leaf would be like a Orange Leaf attached to the stem and those orange Lea leaves being simple leaves has one blade here's the here's the leaf blade here here's the pedal and down where that pedal attaches to the stem I'm sure you all can see it from the back there is a little bud has a little bud and each one of those leaves at the base there is a bud each one of those leaves has a bud at the base of a leaf next to the stem and those buds can regrow let's pass that around again I don't have a mosquite leaf but if we had a mosquite leaf we would find that I'm going to slip over to the White whiteboard there would be a central stem we call it a ratches in the business and here is this basic stem here is the branch and from or along this basic stem there are leaflets that come out my wife is an artist she teaches art at the high school she would laugh at my drawings but that's all right we have these leaflets that come out from the base from the ratches from that Central core and if I look closely at a mosquite leaf there will never be any buds here here there aren't any buds where the bud is is down here because this is one entire Leaf compound leaf versus a simple leaf but the base of every leaf there is is a bud you can tell a compound leaf because the leaflets won't have buds won't have buds the BD the bud is at the base of the leaf so we have to understand that these leaflets of compound leaves do not have Buds and I want you as a project to search the different types of plants look for compound leaves look for simple leaves and find the bud so that's another assignment that I have you're going to learn the different you're going to be able to tell the difference between parallel vein plants and netted vein plants and you're going to learn to find the buds at the base of every leaf that's very important to us because some problems with plants uh from frost or from drought will cause those leaves to fall off here's a simple leaf here in your in the slides here's the pedal that holds the leaf blade up and here is the leaf axle with a bud and each at the base of every leaf there is a bud this is just one of those practical applications in some plants the terminal Bud where it stops for the winter deciduous stop growing plants like ash trees and apricots and apples wherever that terminal Bud stops for the winter will create a scar terminal Bud Scar and you'll see The Ridges around the around the stem so we can tell the time uh of when the last when the last winter was so if January was right here and it's grown this much in October I can measure the distance between this Scar and where the terminal is and determine how much growth I'm getting now in landscape plants it's not a big deal just is an incident of Interest but if I've got a even a landscape tree if I'm only getting just a little bit of growth when the genetics say I should get a lot more I can think to myself what's wrong with this picture what's causing that Fruit Growers will measure the distance they want about 16 inches of growth a year pecans apples and the reason for that is is that they don't want a lot of vegetative growth because of the plant is putting a lot of energy into vegetative growth we're not putting in the fruit they want the fruit because that's what they're growing the plant for if the tree is putting out say 4 Ines of growth in a year then they know I've got to do something different I've got to actually increase my water or my fertilizer applications to encourage more grow growth if on the other hand I'm getting 24 in of growth whoa I'm putting way too much water and energy into that plant and it's growing instead of producing fruit so we can tell the health of the plant and its condition simply by watching the growth in a given season terminal Bud scars I want to come back before before I do balance of energy and talk just a little bit more about these these buds because here we have a terminal bud that's a point where it grows there's a point of growth at the T tips of the branch and there's also growth in the lateral buds or in the axillary buds so I can get growth from the side of the stem I get growth at the tip of the stem I get growth at the side of the stem from the terminal bud or from the lateral or axillary buds so so far now we have found growth in three places in the plant number one is in the cambium layer think cut off the branch and all of a sudden there's lot of new branches growing up comes from the cambium layer the the um terminal bud tips of branches from the axles of base of leaves the lateral Buds and then the next one we'll find will be the tips of roots so these buds are extremely important what's the Practical take-home application in January we often times get a lot of questions after a frost typically comes about on Citrus nobody seems to worry about apples because they're dormant and mosques who cares about mosques but my citrus tree is a big deal to me because I want fruit and I get a frost or a freeze that dips down into the low 20s and it knocks all the leaves off my my tree the question comes in on the phone Rick they say all the leaves have fallen off my lemon tree do I need to dig the tree out and start over again and the answer is as long as the buds at the base of the leaves are still plump and healthy and moist don't worry about it they'll come back but if the wood itself and the buds are dead then we could have some problems just for your information lemons and limes are much more susceptible to frost than oranges and tangerines grapefruit are in the middle we typically can see damage in lemons and limes right at 32 degrees right at freezing limes first then lemons then interesting enough grapefruit at about 20 uh 20 about 29 to 30° then oranges are about 26 and tangerines about 24 and sometimes they will they will graft each one of those varieties on the same tree they call them cocktail trees and it makes a really good thermometer one time because no m whatever that temperature was the most susceptible one is going to die so the lemons and limes die first and then the gripe food so if I if I see a lemon and lime and a grapefruit on a cocktail tree dead and the orange still alive then I I know it was somewhere around 26° when that catastrophic damage took place most people don't want their cocktail tree to serve as a as a thermometer so the take-home message is is that when there is a frost forecast we have to determine what the varieties that we have on the tree if I've got a lime on a cocktail tree or if I have a lime tree and it's forecast for 20 for 32° I better be covering it but if if I've got an orange tree and it's only forecast to be 30° I'm not quite so nervous at the base of every tree of every leaf there is a bud this is probably the the the rule of botney that I use most frequently there must be a balance of energy between the top of the plant and the bottom of the plant key elements of this is is that plants store energy and both the roots and in the stems now we don't worry about that for annual plants because they're going to die anyway but when we're talking about fruit trees for example an apple tree a citrus tree a um a pecan tree we have to understand that the Tree stores its energy in the wood in the trunk and in the branches as well as in The Roots and typically they will have a balance between the top of the tree and the bottom of the tree there'll be just about as much energy stored in the above ground portion as there is in the below ground portion and I can violate this ra this rule of botney very easily if I come back in and I stub back in my pruning I cut all the major branches off clear back to the trunk and it looks like a telephone pole that I've cut out a lot of the energy that has been stored in that plant and that wood that I've cut off and now I've thrown that plant out of balance I've got more energy in the roots than I do in the top and the plant tries to compensate by pushing all of the growth it can to restructure to rebuild that area to re to create a storage place for th for that energy so I have expended a lot of the root energy to create a top and eventually it'll come back to balance especially once we get leaves and start photosynthesizing again but the net storage in that plant has been greatly reduced takes years to build up that energy takes years and it may not be just pruning it could be lack of water I was once asked to help uh renew a pecan Orchard that had been abused not irrigated appropriately and pecans use a lot of water and because they had been stressed for water they had not photosynthesized Ed efficiently and they had used up a lot of the energy just to stay alive very little fruit production just to stay alive they had used up a lot of energy and you could see it in the amount of growth in the leaves you could see it in the amount of growth in the stems you could see it in the size of the canopy you could see it in the thinness of the canopy I could see through the canopy from one side of the tree to the other because there were so few leaves all simp sys of low energy in a plant so how do we get it productive again how do we get it yielding two to three tons of nuts per year when it's averaging now about 700 to 800 PBS in a good year how do we get it back up how do we pay for the water how do we pay for the nutrients how do we pay for the labor how do we pay for the diesel and the tractor we you got to get that yield back up it takes a long time to do that because that tree has to have time to photosynthesize and have enough energy above its normal needs that it can store it takes a long time and many people feel that well I don't I can't pay the water bill today so I'll turn the water off on my apricot tree or my Gra grape vineyard or whatever and they find that they can never get that Orchard or that Vineyard back into productivity because of this balance of energy issue when you look at a at a hedge plant and you can stand and look at a say a Texas Ranger plant and you're looking at it and you can see the ground on the other side through the canopy of the tree through the canopy of the shrub that's an indication that there's a balance of energy problem and why is that because we keep pruning it we keep making it into these little toad stools so they look cute but we keep cutting off the energy the plant saying I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying let me photosynthesize let me give let me balance out my energy and we every year we every week we're coming in and shaving off that growth and that can be a problem most of our healthy shrubs you look and you watch them the healthier shrubs are those that have enough growth area where they can store the energy not only in The Roots but in the stems and you'll find that they're healthier plants so this balance of energy rule is extremely important in plants and when I often times when I am asked to explain an answer that I give relative to plant care I'm often times quoting this rule a change in the balance of energy forces a response in the plant if I cut back heavy I'm going to get a heavy growth but on the other side if something is killing the roots lack of water gopher um uh root disease um nematodes any of these kinds of they're killing the roots then I'm going to see a response in the top and I'll be able to figure out so when I see a problem in the top of the plant I'm always thinking what's going wrong down here I just was reading an article in Georgia pecan magazine yesterday the specialist was saying exactly the same thing we always look up here for the problem when the problem is down here in the roots we have to think about the roots but roots are out of sight out of mind this response can be both beneficial and harmful harmful one of the ways that we increase the sweetness of grapefruit not Citrus grapefruit the berries of table grapes is by interrupting the flow of energy from the leaves to the roots we call that girdling and we have to be real careful careful with it but what we do is we take a girdling knife which is a twin bladed knife and then it's linked at the top so it's it's an oval long oval knife two blades linked at the top with a cutting blade and we will start at um usually at the base oh maybe up 12 18 Ines from the ground and we will start a cut and we will cut all the way around now we're just going through the flo if I go too deep I'm going to kill that plant just the flo I'm cutting through that and I do it in a spiral around the trunk so that the two ends do not meet so I'm always leaving some flum tissue which is right underneath the bark intact so that the plant can heal itself but in the process of cutting through that Flo I'm pushing that sugar that's coming down for storage down in The Roots now can't get to the roots and so it's pushed by the plant someplace else and the second heaviest uh draw the biggest magnet for energy after the roots is the fruit so we can actually Force the fruit it has to be at the right time has to be in the right place has to be done in the right way but we can't and actually increase the sugar the sweetness of fruit berries and it's done all the time in Vineyards yes please is that what makes the grapes larger too no the grape size what makes grape berries larger and we see that all the time with the Flames that we plant in our yard in the store The Flame seedless grapes are big and juicy in our yards they may be the tip of our thumb or smaller make good raisins but they don't give us that big Berry the way we solve that problem is by the appropriate use of growth hormones they will depending upon the variety of grape whether it's pearlet or flame seedless or Cardinal or Thompson seedless whatever the the variety is there's a certain procedure and what they will do in general is is that when the flower cluster emerges and it starts to flower for example in pearlites they'll take a hairbrush one of these plastic uh tonged hair brushes that we use they'll just take that and brush the cluster and knock off a certain percentage of the flowers which gives extra room now between the berries so that they can swell and then as those berries begin to swell at the appropriate time they will come in sometimes they use a shatter spray they'll spray gibberelic acid which is a normal growth hormone they'll spray it onto the berries and it will cause those flowers to to abort fall off same kind of process two different techniques and then at the appropriate time they will come in and spray that cluster with gibberelic acid again to size they call it a sizing spray that will force that Berry to get bigger but the sugaring usually comes from the girdling process so this balance of energy thing can be really beneficial and really helpful or it can be harmful depending upon what the situation is this there has to be a balance of energy between the top of the plant and the bottom of the plant if the plant is out of balance then we're in big trouble just want to quickly walk through some of the issues related to to Roots uh they anchor the plant and the soil they absorb water and nutrients for use in the plant they store food and energy and they prod produce essential compounds that are necessary to the health of the plant so this root system is extremely important and we find most of the problems of plants occur in the roots more than they do in the tops of the plants there are many different types of roots these are examples of tap roots that we use for food but we also find excuse me the uh we are also finding that um there are other types of roots these are fibrous Roots usually found in grassy plants but they are also fibrous roots and systems in and and Broad leaves also it just depends on the type of a plant whether they got a big Tap Root or whether they have a fibrous and some have a combination here's are the parts of a root we have the very tip of the root where the stems that where the excuse me where the cells that divide occur we call it a meristem a meristem is simply a place on the plant where growth occurs so now we've found the fourth place where growth occurs one is in the cambium tips of branches in the axles of leaves and at the tips of roots tips of roots right behind the root cap which is the area of most division we find the zone of elongation that's where the new cells get longer and wider they are maturing and where they are expanding in size now let me do let me Orient this correctly where they're expanding in size they are pushing the tip of the root down deeper into the soil the where the where the cells are mature and reach their maximum size no growth occurs it only occurs at the tips of the roots and so the roots grow at the very tips and they are forced into new soil through the elongation of these cells so here's an example a drawing of a root here's the root cap that is made up of cells that are throwaway cells when you push a root through the through the so oil it's like rubbing your hand on sandpaper and so the root very tender tips of the roots they have this protective cap that keeps them from becoming damaged they they're throwaway cells then there is the very tip of the root where these cells now are dividing they're dividing actively in the zone of elongation here is where these cells are getting longer and wider and that's where the growth and it's and this division of the cells is pushing that root tip that that uh elongation of the root uh cells is pushing that root tip down deeper into the soil above the zone of elongation up in the zone of maturation is where we see the root St static in the soil it doesn't go any deeper it's always going to be at that level and as that root matures it starts putting out little structures called root hairs and root hairs are where most of the water and nutrients of are absorbed it doesn't come so much through the it can but it doesn't come through the outside edges of the roots it's picked up by these root tip root hairs and when we transplant a plant whether it's from the nursery or whether we dig it up can determine whether or not those root hairs we put a lot of torque on that root ball and we rip those root hairs it's going to take a lot longer for that plant to re to adjust to its new place and be able to reach a balance of energy and be able to take hold and start growing so we need to be real careful with these root hairs I was um asked in June one year to come look at a uous plant and um that was dying and when I went over to look at it it was a 6ot tall plant beautiful plant but the neighbor was moving and he said you can have my plant come get it so the guy went and got it transplanted it and June we already know that's the toughest month don't we when I got over there I asked him how much of a root ball they had well I don't know something about this size here's the size of a plant a little teeny TI what does that say about the balance of energy and where are the root hairs and that plant fried within an hours and yeah it died there has to be a balance of energy and there has to be enough structure to especially in those hot months to pick up the water and the nutrients that we need I put this slide up only to show you this picture here the this concept says that Roots only will grow into to areas where the water they only grow in the presence of water they don't seek water they don't have a brain to go say oh this is dry soil they only grow when they are in moist soil they don't grow into dry soil and this this slide is a picture of a cotton root in a drip irrigated field where is the drip emitter is there a drip of M over here no because this route here now is good a urn it came out this way but it says I'm not going that way and turned around and came over to here now I want you to translate that in your mind to a drip arrogated Tree in your yard how many emitters are around your tree and where are the wetted pad patterns if I've got a wetted pattern on one side of my tree and nothing on this side I've got a problem I may be able to give it enough water but when the wind blows I've got a problem if it blows this direction okay I'm okay this will anchor it in the ground but if it's blowing this direction what's going to keep it from toppling over in a windstorm do we ever see trees topple in a windstorm and have we ever looked at the roots have we ever looked at the irrigation system often times we don't but we need to pay attention to how these are done we'll talk more about that when we get to uh irrigation uh reproduction is a top priority for all plants we can reproduce plants either asexually by cuting or division from the from the or by grafting taking a bud off of a desirable plant and grafting it into a desirable root stock or we can start a whole different plant with different genetics by planting a seed through that has been developed through fruiting and flowering two different styles of plant propagation but they all fit into this one rule every plant is going to put a high priority in into creating new seeds and fruit whether it's a grass or whether it's an apple they're going to put a high priority into these flowering structural processes so you watch a Bermuda grass lawn especially in the fall it's quick to put up seed heads when we have a weed growing in the yard it's quick to put up flowers and create seeds when we're growing apple trees those apples create a huge demand for that plant to take care of those so that the seeds the plant wants to reproduce itself and we need to make sure if it's a desirable plant to be able to provide the needs that they have uh just in general the structures of a flower um the petals the seel which are the structures that cover the bud protect it the together of that it create it's what we call the perianth or the flower inside that flower there are male parts and female parts the female part consists of the ovary and the baby seeds called ovules a small narrow neck in the in the in the structure that keeps insect and dirt out from inside of the plant and then a ring area sticky on top that accepts the pollen from the male parts the male parts of the flower on the other hand are the um the anthers at the top which contain the pollen and the filaments which hold that anther up close to the area where uh the female receptive parts are so the pollen moves from the male parts into the female the uh pollen germinates sends down a pollen tube that goes down through that narrow neck and hooks up with the ovil and transmits the genetic material that allows that seed to mature if that process fails in some way the plant will often times abort that flower or the the developing fruit it's a very common question that we get with cucurbit plants uh cucurbits are a family of plants that has a male flower and a female flower on the same plant but in different locations a watermelon squash cantaloupe cucumbers uh are all in that cucurbit family have a male flower and a female flower on the same plant but in different locations to get the pollen from the male flow to the feale female flower there has to be a pollinator usually insects like Bees honey bees are very important to the in fact you'll you'll drive by a a field of cantaloupes or watermelons and there will often be stacks of beehives out there which they're using as pollinators very commonly what we'll see in the spring of the year is these winter storms that blow through and these early season cantaloupes or watermelon um we'll find that sometimes the fruit starts to turn black it's about this long turns black shrivels up and falls off and that freaks out new Growers a lot of times Rick my squash is turning black and shriveling up and falling off and I think back to the calendar and about the time that that was a flower needing to be pollinated was when we had a winter storm blow through and on a day when the winter storm clery the bees don't go out they look at they stick out their antenna and say whoa it's cold out here it's raining out here they'll just stay in the hive and do whatever bees do on rainy days and the pollinating work doesn't get done and when that that fruit that plant realizes that that fruit is not pollinated it's not going to produce seeds because it's it's trying to produce seeds doesn't care about the fruit just trying to get those seeds when it realized those seeds are not pollinated it aborts of fruit and gives that kind of a symptom so the we just tell the The Growers be careful and be patient and and and the bees will take care of it longer they're there so these flowers are very important to the health and the well-being of the plant there's several different types of flowers that you need to be aware of there are complete flowers that is it has all four of the pieces the petals and the seel the pistols and the stamman and I didn't explain that uh stamans are the male parts and pistols are the female it's entire structure so when we look at this flower again this is the uh uh pistolet part of the flower the female part of the flower it's made up of a stigma which is this ring at the top the style which is the narrow neck and the ovary which contains the structure that's that protects that of the baby seeds That's the pistol or the uh female part of the plant the male part is composed of the anthers and the filaments and we call those um uh stams so when we look at these different types we have a flower that has both a male and a female the petals and the SEL as a complete flower an incomplete flower in the literature sometimes when you're reading about plants it'll say it has has an incomplete flower and you'll be able to tell when it's missing one of these parts more importantly to us is these the concept of the perfect imperfect flowers um a perfect flower is when it has both the male and the female part an imperfect flower is one that has only a male or only a female and in some plants we have plants that have the male and the female flowers on the same plant but at different locations and we also have plants that are only male plants and only female plants so as a a staminate flower is one that has a staminate plant is one that has only male flowers and a pistolet flower is only one that has female and no knowledge of this scientific principle absolutely saved my marriage well that's probably not true it's let's just say that it enhanced the relationship between me and my mother-in-law wonderful woman wants to grow dates in Her yard she loves dates but she lives at a 5,000 foot elevation which is not really conducive to dates I didn't think she would be able to grow dates in Her yard but she did and so one day she wanted to have dates so she found a date that she really liked ate the fruit and put the seed in the ground makes me nervous because you never know what the genetics are right but it grew and she had this beautiful tree and it started flowering and she couldn't figure out why she wasn't getting dates on it so she called me over I was over there one time I went and I said I looked at that tree and I said mother I can guarantee you that this palm tree is never going to give you dates and she kind of got a little frustrated at that and she said well why not I said well you look at those flowers up there those are male flowers this is a male tree and it will never put on dates because it has no female flowers so what do you what did I do she said I said well you go online or find a catalog and find a female tree of the variety that you want and you order that in and you plant it don't put seeds in the ground because you might get another male plant order in a female plant put it in and she did and when the first date came off the first date crop came off I got one just one and thanks for being able to solve that problem and how come because we knew that there was a difference between a male tree and a female tree there are others that are same way besides date palms uh pistachios have male trees and female trees there are also other plants like we've mentioned before that have um the um um plant the flowers on one side and the the male and the female flowers on the same plant but in different locations a dous means two d means two so that's male on One Tree and a female on the other and am monus is where I've got one plant with a male flower and a female types of fruit uh I'm not going to spend too much time on this just simply that there are different types of fruit and in the process of uh studying those fruits they all work differently an aggregate fruit such as a raspberry is uh a single flow that has many ovaries and many seeds in it and every time you eat a raspberry you get a lot of seeds or a strawberry you recognize that and then the other one that I want to talk about is the fruit of the Fig Tree there are there are um a fruit that has many different ovaries inside a structure so we have um independent flowers inside a fig or in a pineapple each one of those bumps is a different flower multiple flowers figs are made up of all of these flowers on the inside uh figs have a challenge in that they some of the types of figs the Smyrna type figs which we typically don't grow here are pollinated by a wasp that crawls in through a little hole in the bottom of the Fig and pollinates those flowers and some of the figs that we do grow in America have that little hole in the bottom like a brown turkey and instead of wasp getting in there the the brown the dried fruit Beetle or other little brown beetles get in there and start walking around and reproducing and so I do not like to recommend those varieties that have the hole at the bottom because most people do not like to have protein with their carbohydrates so the seeds are important because they can create new plants and I think we're pretty much familiar with that this is simply a discussion on the various structures of the seeds the seed coat uh the uh the the baby seed and this this seed in there is called the embryo and uh here is the baby embryo here the baby root called The Radical the baby leaves called the plumi if you SOA open a bean seed you'll be able to see that baby embryo if you're very careful to watch most of the seed contains the energy and the Cod Leen that that baby needs to get its roots in the ground and its leaves in the air I think it's important to talk just a little bit about the different germination processes in a a dcot leading plant that tends to lift its head it will push up but it lifts its head up in such a manner whereas a monocot a grass has a very sharp tip and it pushes up and then opens up and we um often times need to make sure in the germination process that we don't get a really hard crust on the soil at that critical time when it needs needs to poke through otherwise we may not get a germination in our seeds that we want we have to keep that soil crust soft so a die Coten plant can poke through it's easier to get a stand of sweet corn than it is to get a stand of say um lettuce or uh cauliflower or broccoli from seed rule number six we've talked about the Four Points where growth can occur the terminal Bud the lateral buds the root tips and the cambium layer have a friend who asked me one time to about his mulberry tree there was a branch that was coming out about waist high and he was trying to Bow underneath that tree and every time he go under the tree he'd bang his head and he said when is that tree going to grow up high enough that I won't be able I won't bang my head and I said it's never going to happen happen because once that wood is set it never grows because the growth occurs at different parts of the plant and to this day now 30 years later that branch is still growing at the same level and I suspect he's probably still banging his head on that Branch this I get put this into your into your note simply because it gives you all of these parts and pieces now in one uh resource so that you can see all the parts of the plant together number seven pruning is a method of dwarfing we can by pinching off a a plant through the bonide gardening technique keep a big tree what normally genetically would be a huge tree teeny tiny in a small plot we can do that pruning is a method of of dwarfing but where we run into trouble is is when we plant a big tree in a teeny tiny space and try to keep it small by pruning because there has to be a balance of energy when we allow that plant to get so tall and have that much energy in its root system and then try to prune it back we've already seen that that creates a response in the plant where it's back doing its thing again I'll show you some photographs when we talk about pruning that demonstrate that technology it's better just to stay say today it's better to get the right siiz genetically sized tree and put it in that small space than it is to buy a big tree and try to keep it small in place pruning is a method of dwarfing but it takes a lot of work pruning every day and most people are not going to prune their mosquite tree in their patio every day to keep the branches Off The Roots off the roof and and also from going over the wall into the neighbor's yard and finally Bud growth is managed by plant chemistry as a plant is growing it sends back a chemical signal to the buds behind it saying I'm here I'm doing my job everything's cool hang tough but if a deer comes by and nips off the tip of the the branch and or if we cut it off or if it dies back because of drought then those buds behind that chemical signal is interupted and the buds behind it wake up and start growing so this chemical symbol plant chemistry this chemical signal is critical to the plant and allows it to the flexibility to come back from injury and to heal itself if we just give it time so we have talked about the eight different principles rules of Botany that I use the most often in my discussions and I find that it is very helpful when I'm answering questions and people want to know why they should do a particular step or why not to do something if I can explain to them the scientific principle behind what we're asking them to do and as you and I understand these principles better we will be able to make sound decisions in our Gardens and our plants our psyches and our pocketbooks are going to be much happier I'll be glad to stay afterwards and answer any questions that you have Lynn