Transcript
Alexis : We're gonna be doing some learning today, friends. We like to think you're always learning, but also enjoying when you're here with us, but maybe a little bit of both today, so for sure.
Plant People: Learning from you guys.
brett: yeah Hopefully they're they're you're you either yearning to learning.
Plant People: Sounds like an open-ended topic.
Alexis : Learning to learning.
Plant People: Yearning to learn.
Alexis : We are extension professionals, right? It says that in the intro. So we have to do some learn some learning, but hopefully these will be useful learning and you'll be um famous at parties for your knowledge.
Alexis : That's what I think.
Plant People: Or ostracized parties either way.
brett: Famous at parties.
Plant People: You know, people may avoid you.
Alexis : you Never. Listen, if you're ostracized at a party, let us know.
Plant People: You're the wrong party.
Alexis : You can come to our parties. Yeah, you're at the wrong party.
Plant People: You're the wrong party.
Alexis : you got to find your people. um
Plant People: You got to find the garden party. The garden party is where you want to be. Save friend and enter.
Alexis : Yeah, the garden party. Well, we thought we would, um you know, we talk a lot. We use a lot of vocab words on this podcast. And we were like, you know, it'd be fun to maybe dive ah into some of those, you know, botany vocab words that we throw around.
Alexis : um I've got a few fun ones that are probably not something you'll use in your everyday life. But you might. And also, you might win a Jeopardy question with these.
brett: You should use them in your everyday life.
Alexis : You never know it. The Daily Double might be something that you'll answer with one of mine, but also just, you know, some concepts.
Plant People: jeopardy
Alexis : I know we throw a lot of those words around. So we just thought, hey, let's just have a little little little learning, little botany session with you guys.
brett: Words. Words with friends, words with plants.
Plant People: plant people talking botany.
Alexis : We're just plants.
Plant People: No way. Who would have saw that coming?
Alexis : We're just plant at people.
Plant People: Ooh, I like that words with plant people.
Alexis : I will tell you my favorite one that is not actually a part of this definition, but I've said it before and I'll say it again. ah The day I learned that plants have something called a Megaspore Mother Cell was like the day I was like TM.
Alexis : That is my band name. um But you yeah, that exists. And if you wanted to have a rock band named Megaspore Mother Cell, you can be in my rock band because I have no actual musical talent.
brett: Mega Spore Mother Cell.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: You just gave away your idea, Alexis.
Alexis : Yeah, it's real thing.
Plant People: Now everyone's going to go out and just use that.
Alexis : No, listen, if I'm an extension, we're all about sharing here.
brett: Yeah, Ray.
Alexis : Free sharing, even though I i did technically say TM, so.
Plant People: Yeah, just
Plant People: but trademark. trade run yeah So are you going to explain what that is? I mean, that's too provocative.
Alexis : No, that one's not on in the list. I just wanted everybody to know I had it as a band name.
Plant People: Got you that it's on there.
brett: i will say nothing further.
Plant People: Now everyone's going to have to go look it up. They're probably doing that right now as they're listening to this.
Alexis : fifty fifty
Plant People: So it does sound like a rock band, probably a late nineties.
Alexis : Maybe that'll be our Instagram post. I'll put that as our Instagram post.
Plant People: You know, it's go it's ah definitely a band name.
brett: What is Megaspore Mother Cell, Alex?
Alexis : Exactly.
brett: I mean, Ken.
Alexis : Ken.
Plant People: It's a four piece band with lots of electrification and neon lights, Brett.
Alexis : All
Plant People: That's what it is.
Alexis : right.
brett: Well, i I have a little set of them.
Alexis : all right Well, who wants to go first?
brett: um
Alexis : Love it.
brett: So I think one of one of the ways that you can take... if you're interested in trees or you're interested in shrubs or what any, you know, kind of any of the plants, a typical way that lot of times we'll identify those is by looking at the leaves.
brett: And when you look at the leaves, there's different terminology that people will use to describe them.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: And so I thought I would give you some of those terms. And so the starting from this, the area off the plant that it's coming off of the plant, that little thing that you might want to call the stem of the leaf, um,
brett: The little nibbin that connects the the main part of the leaf back to the plant is the petiole. And so last time we were talking about crushing petioles and getting the juice out and putting it in a meter to um to see about ah nutrition.
brett: So that's the petiole.
Alexis : Is your testing?
brett: It's not a stem. It's a petiole. Okay. As you move up the petiole, the extension of that through the leaf in many cases, it's that kind of central structure under of the like actual leaf part.
Alexis : Get it straight.
Alexis : The vein.
brett: It's like the central vein we call the midrib. And then coming off of that midrib are these veins. So the veiny structures are called veins in this case. So you have the midrib, the veins. Now, the thing about those is like the petiole could be different colors. It could have a different characteristic that could be used to describe to tell one thing from another. The vein might be a particular color or thickness or whatever, and the veins might come off in different orientations. So they can be kind of slightly alternated or they can be, you know, different angles, whatever. the edge of the leaf all the way around. If you were to take and trace the whole outside of it, we call that the margin of the leaf. So, you know, people on the margins of society or on the edges of society, the edge of the leaf is the margin of the leaf. And that's a big one, um, that you'll see to, to, for people to differentiate. And so you'll see if it's completely smooth, if it's toothed, if the two thing might have a particular characteristic, it could be deeply, um, uh,
brett: What is the word here?
Alexis : Looked.
Plant People: Lobed or toothed.
Alexis : lookeded
brett: Yeah, lobed or serrated or whatever. it it it can That is another way.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: And so when you look at tree identification, sometimes they'll give an indication that of a ah you know deeply lobed margin or something like that. and they're just talking about the edge. And then you go out to the the tip. The spaces between the leaf or sorry between the veins on the leaf are called the lamina.
brett: um I don't really see a whole lot of that in identification, but sometimes...
Alexis : No, we don't use that too often.
brett: But yeah, so petiole, vein, midrib, margin, and vein. Those are some of the big ones that I think people use to describe relief.
Plant People: And if you've ever done a leaf collection in school, this is eminently important or should have been eminently important to you.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: i don't know, Brett, is this, you guys, is this the most common way when people are trying to figure out something, identify something? Is this one of the most common ways that they do it? Look for the leaves and some of these features, Brett?
Plant People: It seems like one of the things I look for first.
brett: I think so. I think depends it depends on what what you're talking about. um Because like, yeah, it depends on the time of year.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And time of year.
brett: It depends on how close you're able to get or want to get. ah
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: yeah.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: But like you can also tell things from like the the shape or structure of ah of the plant itself. like ah Like maple trees tend to grow like maple trees as compared to a ginkgo.
Alexis : yeah
brett: And and that's that's a silly thing to say, but like people who are good at trees, they can see it from a long distance away.
Plant People: oh yeah
brett: They can just tell. And so, like for instance, you may think all pine trees look like pine trees, but if I'm driving by and I see an eastern white pine versus a Virginia pine, i it's it's immediate, like from a long way off, I can tell the difference.
brett: And we were at Udell recently and there was a... ah a cultivar of white pine that had extremely short needles, which of course I was like bonsai immediately, please.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : ah
brett: But also it was like, it was a little disorienting because it just didn't look, you could just tell something didn't look right about it. The color was right.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: The growth habit was similar, but the the needles, it felt, felt different. So anyway, um yeah, I think, I think the leaf shape is one of those where you can, Especially if you're like, I'm not sure if, you know, it could be this or it could be this, you might move in closer and see, oh okay.
brett: I can see the margin on this one is clearly this.
Alexis : Or like, um you know it might you know it's an oak, so oaks are a good example. A lot of people can identify an oak or a maple, right? you Those are a little more intrinsic for those of us who grew up in around deciduous forest, but you don't know what kind of oak.
Alexis : And so then you can look at the leaves because there's a lot of different leaf shapes in oak, same with maple.
brett: Exactly.
Alexis : um But you can get you can at least get down to, God, and maelots.
brett: And a lot of hybridization within oaks makes me mad.
Plant People: You know, in in landscap and landscaping, we didn't look at really ah the the leaf itself first in landscape design. I worked a little bit in commercial landscaping. ah When I was first getting started is, Brett, you mentioned just the form of a tree, the general form.
Plant People: There's a big difference between a weeping willow and a Colorado blue spruce, and it's, you know, physiological and and its mental impact on you and the landscape and how that affects design. But just the form of a tree, there's all of these terminologies that will describe the basic, whether it's, and you know, Lancelot shape, the form, columnar, you know, globe-shaped, whatever.
Plant People: there's There's this whole vocabulary just to describe not the leaf shape, but the overall appearance.
brett: The actual tree shape.
Alexis : to form. formed
Plant People: Yeah, weeping, whatever, yeah.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: but there's it's got its own vocabulary list just for the shape of the general tree. And i I think that's pretty cool. And it's kind of a big deal for landscape architects and designers.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And I will say, if you're like, wow, how do people learn all of this? This is so much to intake. Please remember, it took us years of these. For Ray and i years of studying and have degrees in it.
Alexis : For Brett, it's just years of nerding out over tiny, tiny trees.
Plant People: Love and care.
brett: curious character.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : ah But it's not something you need to remember overnight more along the lines of making you aware that these things exist so that when you hear them, you're like, I think that, you know, a petiole, I think that has something to do with the leaf.
Plant People: yeah
Alexis : Right. And, you know, um that will be helpful.
Plant People: And some some trees that everybody owns.
brett: Yeah. and between between your between a book or like an app or or you know something that you have with you, like it's very common for people who are doing identification and stuff to have stuff with them, you know either notes or to have a book.
brett: It's where you can compare and look and see it.
Alexis : Mine's my car.
brett: So it's not yeah it's it's not like people are just like everybody's just walking around with this vocabulary of all these different things.
Alexis : oh yes that was the red oak that is native to nah i got a tree id book in my car i can key out like
brett: Yeah.
brett: Yeah. Taste the leaf a little. The tannin content suggests a Quercus rubrum.
Alexis : growing in more acidic soil yeah well i've got
brett: Yeah, so ah so that's so that's my leaf my leaf shape quick tips. I have some other leaf ones too, but even just being aware that like the difference between like the difference between like an an ashaf and a ah
Alexis : Yeah, I
brett: a horn beam, you know, like some people might confuse those if they don't have any idea what they're doing. But as soon as you look at it and a little bit more closely and know what you're looking at, there's kind of some similarity. I mean, there's some different real difference.
Plant People: The a leaf versus a leaflet. Yeah.
Alexis : yeah i was going to say.
brett: Yep, exactly.
Plant People: Yep. Yeah. and Which that it's, it's kind of tough. You're like, Oh, leaves. That's pretty straightforward. That's a leaf on a tree. No, it's not because is it a leaf or a leaflet?
Alexis : No, that whole thing is the entire leaf.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Like Kentucky coffee tree, the quote unquote leaf is like four foot long.
Plant People: yeah yeah
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : It's the leaflets that are the small things.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: So you are leading me into this and we'll just going to up talking about trees the whole time.
Alexis : Okay.
Plant People: yeah
brett: But, uh, but so what, what Ray and Alexis are talking about is the difference between a simple leaf and a compound leaf.
Plant People: That's fun too. Yeah. I'm good with it.
brett: And so a simple leaf, you, the leaf comes directly off of the branch of the tree. And it's just a single, usually a single little leaf that comes off. It's a simple leaf. Hence the name simple, the compound leaves, uh,
brett: There is a central ah axis, I guess, a central. It looks like a sort of a stem, but it is actually all that whole thing and all of the little sub leaflets that come off of it are all one big leaf.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. They all come off of one main petiole.
brett: Technically, technically speaking.
Plant People: Leaflet, yeah, leaflet doesn't come from, is it a leaflet doesn't come from a node?
brett: Yes.
Plant People: It comes from a stem and a true leaf has to come from a node. I know it gets confusing in there when you dig too deep into the weeds.
brett: Yeah.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: So.
brett: And the the reason, i mean, part of the reason that matters or that as far as growth happens and stuff like that is that new branches are going to come primarily from a bud at the base of that compound leaf.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: There's not going to be, you know, six or eight little branches that are going to come off of that leaflet in the same way. And so, um but like a black walnut is an example, black locust.
brett: what I just said one. What did I just say?
Plant People: You guys are talking about the coffee tree There's like shoemakes You know
brett: What did I compare to the carpinet?
Alexis : Yellow, oh, I don't remember which tree you compared.
Plant People: Ash trees Ash yeah
Alexis : Hornbeam and ash.
brett: An ash. I think it was an ash. Yeah. um But anyway, so so that that's it.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. And
brett: can Sometimes it still fools me because especially in the early part of the season when shoots are extending and stuff's growing and it still has a greenness to it, it kind of can look like it. So, um yeah, it's kind of a kind of an interesting piece.
Alexis : then you have double compound leaves. We get crazy up in here, you guys.
brett: yeah
Plant People: Panate compound, bipanately, yeah.
brett: And the nature, and you even you can have ones that look more like your palm rather than the long skinny ones.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Poundately, yeah. Buckeye trees looking at you.
brett: So anyway, simple leaf versus compound leaf. Take a look at the margin. And with that, you can pretty well identify a whole lot of stuff.
Plant People: Sure.
brett: What other stuff we got?
Plant People: Good stuff.
brett: i have one written down that i can I don't have an answer to, but I can pull you all on.
Plant People: Alexis threw out a term and did not explain it. So that's the rule of this episode. If you throw out a botany term, you have to explain it.
brett: Will you all?
Plant People: Uh, what you said deciduous, but now you, that may not have been yours, but yeah.
Alexis : OK, well, i I have one.
brett: Okay, Alexis.
Alexis : Okay. Well, I can, do you want me to cover deciduous? Deciduous is just the um plant loses its leaves in the winter is like the easiest way, right?
brett: This is a little...
Plant People: Yeah. There you go.
Alexis : So we have like conifers, yes, that keep their needles or we have some, you know, like trees that'll keep their leaves, shrubs that keep their leaves, you know, through winter boxwood for an example versus a maple, an oak we keep going back to because those are easy.
Plant People: Boom. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : But um they lose their leaves in the winter. So they're deciduous. So you might hear like, oh, it's a deciduous forest region, meaning majority of the forest loses loses its leaves.
Alexis : It's it's naked um in the wintertime. So that's deciduous. That wasn't one of mine. i was going to talk about one yeah.
brett: So can i can i briefly interject?
Alexis : yeah Yes.
brett: Because I'm always curious about the origin of words. So the deciduous comes from a very linear, um the Latin word deciduous.
Alexis : Mm.
brett: meaning tending to fall or falling down or off. So it's more of the physical description rather than anything botanical.
Alexis : Leafful.
brett: um And apparently at some point they use the set term to describe things like antlers and baby teeth and other stuff that just falls out periodically.
Alexis : ass Leafful.
Plant People: So I have deciduous teeth. That's strange to me.
brett: My adult hair, deciduous, goodbye.
Plant People: I have deciduous. Deciduous. It has fallen. Mm-hmm.
brett: Anyway, so what was your Yeah.
Alexis : I'm going to start using that more. and dar oh well, i if I feel like it's timely because some of you out there might be doing some cover cropping either for the summer because you're you know sick of
brett: yeah
Alexis : the heat and the garden and no shame there or going into winter, you might be wanting to, you know, put some cover crop down. And so a term to be familiar with, especially there, but also if you happen to have some black walnuts on your property is a term called allelopathy.
Alexis : And I think we've brought this up before in some older episodes, but this is, um,
brett: Oh.
Plant People: Um,
Alexis : Basically something that the plant does, this you know organism does, it releases these biochemicals through the root system but to ah prevent germination of other plants that aren't itself. So you know a black walnut can tolerate its own juglone, which is its allelopathy. Rye, the reason I bring it up for cover crops is rye has some allelopathic things that can be used for weed suppression. So that's a way it's used in cover crops. But to also say, you know, maybe you put in a rye cover crop, you mow it down, roll it down, whatever you do to terminate it, you can't go in and direct seed your carrots into that um for a couple weeks because those chemicals in the soil will prevent that germination. So that's one that I always kind of have to keep in mind.
Alexis : You can go in with transplants, things like that, um but seeding is usually off limits. Now some like the black walnut, There's plants that are very sensitive, even if you go in as transplants. So tomatoes are very sensitive to black walnuts. If you plant anywhere within that ah canopy zone, um you're going to have some problems. They are very unhappy with the drug loan. But yeah, it keeps competition down for those plants and allows only their basically only their offspring to germinate and grow.
brett: So, uh, just another, another little eto etymological word, word thing, allelopathy, combination of allelon and pathos sometimes translate are artfully translated as mutual suffering.
Alexis : it's pretty cool.
Alexis : Yes.
brett: So that it, it causes, it has this effect on the other, you know, this idea of ah affecting other plants.
Plant People: Seems about right. Yeah.
brett: Um,
Alexis : I feel like if there's anybody out there who is um a pastor or someone who marries people, ah figure out how to work that into some, you know, marriage stuff. Like don't have an allelopathic marriage.
Plant People: Not a good thing.
Alexis : I like it.
brett: Or if you do ensure that your partner is strong enough to grow through it.
Alexis : Not a good thing.
Plant People: It's a growth opportunity, but not necessarily good one.
Alexis : don't be the Don't be the black walnut to your partner's tomato.
Plant People: Yeah, and there's some really cool ah extension information on the susceptibility of different plants to those ah compounds and plants that you know inhibit competition around it and pay particular attention to that because some you know garden crops are much more affected by that than other crops.
Plant People: And you can usually find that information readily available online from your local extension service.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: So check that out.
Alexis : and hopefully use it to your own benefit. Like that's the rye both is, has allelopathic tendencies, but it also like physically can cover the soil like a mulch, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : So it's ah it's a double whammy there if used properly and, you know, with the right crops.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : So, um you know, i like I like to get all the bang for the buck that I can get, okay?
brett: I like it.
Plant People: So one of these botany things is, you know, on the surface when we start to talk about these things and I really start to think about them, they like get progressively more complex. We started talking about leaves and then it got progressively more complex.
Alexis : We're like a petiole, a double compound.
Plant People: You talk about a, yeah, petiole. Yeah. And then we just kind of branch out, no pun intended.
brett: Ayo.
Plant People: And we just go deeper and deeper down the Greek naming rabbit hole or whatever, of the Latin naming hole.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: We have entered our mutual suffering.
Plant People: Yeah. And we...
Alexis : I had so many flashcards, like just, yeah, like, you know, a stack this thick that I took everywhere with me.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : And in any downtime, I had to go through the flashcards. So like, no one's expecting you to memorize them overnight. But again, you could be really cool at parties if you know some of these things. I'm just saying, I'm just saying.
Plant People: Good stuff. um I was trying to think of one. I i i was thinking of ah a couple, but one of the big concepts I think a lot about, and especially in landscape plants and um you know commercial fruit and vegetable crops, is this concept of monicious or daecious. Monicious meaning...
Plant People: Male and female flowers are on the same plant. It can be self-fruitful, which is oftentimes the case, or it may not be self-fruitful. In a lot of cases it is.
Alexis : I'm both
Plant People: ah Yeah, it sometimes it's compatible with itself, sometimes it's not, but the main thing to remember male and female on the same plant. Now, on the other end of that, you have dioecious, meaning separate male and female flowers on separate plants.
Plant People: And that's a really important concept. And I was i was like, well, what's a practical example of that? Well, we had a, um and we were talking about asparagus and and it just dawned on me. That's a great ah example of where a crop was totally changed because it was dioecious.
Plant People: And I'll give an example of that. Old asparagus plantings in the U.S. were like old standard varieties, heirloom varieties like Martha Washington, which were made up of both male and female plants.
Plant People: They were dioecious, but that was not a good thing because then they would produce viable seeds. They'd go into the soil and just you had all this asparagus that got too thick.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: And it just crowded itself out over time. And it just sort of was not a desirable situation. Well, now I try to stress that if it's fine, if you want to grow a heirloom asparagus, you can do that and manage it a certain way.
Plant People: But I encourage people to pick one of the newer like male hybrids. Male because they have bigger spheres and they don't you know waste any energy on reproductive parts, which is, you know, the female plants.
Plant People: But they're all male hybrids. And the reason for that being they're very carefully bred and selected to be mostly, not all, but mostly male hybrids in that they will then not produce seeds that are overcrowd the patch over time.
Plant People: And all of that, and you know, the rise up of asparagus and home gardens, a lot of that was due to the fact of manipulation of monoecious and dioecious concepts.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: You know, there's a lot of monoecious concepts in your garden. You know, that' thing and that's a very good thing where male and female flowers, they'll cross and you'll have, you know, crops like corn and things like that that will pollinate easier because, you know, it has male and female um on the same plant.
Plant People: a lot of the vine crops, cucumbers, squash, things like that, all monoecious. But that's a really cool, powerful concept. and And it also translates to landscape plants and I guess the classic example there, ginkos, what else?
Alexis : Ginkgos. That's
Plant People: ah Like hollies, if you want beautiful holly berries, you got to have, you know, the blue girl and the blue girl holly, you know, the old standard.
Alexis : the email plan.
Plant People: varieties, or you have to have a male and female if you want the berries. But in landscaping as well as food production, this concept of milnecious and dioecious, really important concept and plant breeding, really super important also.
Plant People: But it's kind of cool that, and you know, you could go far down that rabbit hole and I'm careful not go too far.
Alexis : yeah perfect and imperfect flowers like yeah
Plant People: Yes, it goes really, really far down that rabbit hole. But what other things I guess talking about this guy?
brett: Well, so the the way that i remember the way that I remember that um is that you know mono, like one, that it it takes one to tango if it's monoecious. If it's dioecious, it takes two to tango.
brett: In other words, you need to you need a two different plants.
Plant People: There you go.
brett: to But it gets to the point of like the usable or desirable portion of the plant
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: for us is kind of, in some cases, at odds with the innate, whatever you want to say, logic of that plant's life. You know, the plant, a plant wants to grow to be, ah to produce viable offspring.
Alexis : Reproduce.
brett: And if you have just male asparagus, there's not going to be any offspring. And that for us is a good thing.
Alexis : I have a great example of this. I might have told you all before, but ah when I worked in Boyle County, ah down the streets, the street trees, ah 20 years ago were ginkgo's planted, all male ginkgo's.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And they worked with the so um UK arborists.
Plant People: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Alexis : They planted all male ginkgo's. They were male for 10, 15 years. And slowly but surely, those plants changed to, some of those plants, not all, changed to female because they want to reproduce. And so the the the plant by itself, which is I mean, it's crazy when you think about it, right?
Alexis : Like, it's just not something that happens ah in in everything, but plants and certain animals do this. They'll, it changed sex because it said, these are all males. They somehow know that there is a word for that.
Alexis : I don't know that word. I'll have to look that one up, but slowly, but surely those,
brett: All toxic masculinity.
Plant People: that's it.
Alexis : maybe it's toxic femininity because they're turning female.
brett: It was so toxic that some of them needed to get out.
Alexis : Um,
brett: Whoa.
Alexis : Yeah, they were like, oh, men, there's too much men here.
Plant People: We learned about a Jurassic Park with frogs.
Alexis : But those plants started to turn female and no one believed, they were like, oh no, they've always been female.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And i'm like, no, that's not true. This happens. So it is it's just kind of wild when you think about it.
brett: whoa
Plant People: Well, even when you plant the male hybrids like asparagus, there will be, i don't know, half percent, 1%. There's a certain percentage that's acceptable. You can't make it 100% of one thing.
Plant People: So there is a low likelihood that there'll be some, you know, crossing and viable seed production, you know, in an asparagus bed.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: But it's hard to get, like, guaranteed 100%. But in your case, it's a little different where there was a kind of a spontaneous changeover. Yeah. Yeah, and you can talk about like hermaphroditic plants and qualities that come from that.
Plant People: And like I said, go deep down the breeding rabbit hole of this because plant genetics have always been pretty fascinating to me when you start talking about things like heirlooms and what does that mean?
Plant People: an heirloom.
Alexis : who
Plant People: And the only thing makes an heirloom is I know I'm cheating. I'm going into a different concept. I realize this.
Alexis : I love it. Bring it, give it to me.
Plant People: But heirlooms are are fun to me. They kind of relate to this conversation because all an heirloom is is something that's developed in such a way that it's become self-stable over time, typically without intervention.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: It has a genetic pool that's very stable.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: It's developed very ah stability over time. It's typically 50 years or more older. And that seems kind of arbitrary to me. It's a plant that you know has a genetic pool that's 50 years plus.
Alexis : Well, yeah, because, like, how old is, like, a big boy tomato?
Plant People: It's kind of arbitrary. ah Yeah, but but it has to be at least that old. and
brett: When does a big boy tomato become a big man tomato?
Alexis : Mm.
Plant People: Yeah, big man. When does it grow up? But yeah, heirlooms are kind of cool like this because they have this genetic stability, but does that mean... When you have tomatoes with other hybrids in the garden, is it going to maintain 100% stability as an heirloom?
Plant People: Absolutely not.
Alexis : Mm.
Plant People: If you left them together for 50 more years, you know, all these different varieties with your heirloom, you would have slow genetic dilution over time.
Alexis : No.
Alexis : You'd have a different plan.
Plant People: But for the most part, it's very stable. You don't have F1 generations where you're breeding two distinct parents to get a hybrid offspring. That's the whole F1 generation of breeding, but yeah.
Alexis : ah to That's your poodle and your, I always use the dog reference, that's your poodle and your golden retriever making a golden doodle.
Plant People: safety
Alexis : That's your F1 is your golden doodle.
Plant People: Yes. But if you breed that dog to another dog, you're not going to get a very predictable outcome.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: You're going to get a genetic outcross, but yeah.
brett: And feel free to go to the your local humane society's listings to see the byproducts of that type of breeding.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: They will be there, but yeah, it's kind of cool. This monaceous, dioecious and plant breeding. That's where I kind of nerd out and I kind of enjoy kind of, uh, looking, you know, into this s because it kind of goes to my apple background.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: When you talk about like tree fruit crops, it gets really interesting.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: So it is does open pollinated fit in there?
Plant People: Yeah. Open pollinated. Yes.
brett: Is it a just a synonym or is it...
Plant People: Uh,
Plant People: Tomatoes are interested when you say open pollinated because, you know, by the time the flower actually opens, it's just about pollinated almost instantly. And then no other pollen can get in. In that particular case, it's open pollinated.
Plant People: But at the same point, the plant kind of keeps its stability. You know, in the case of like we were talking about heirlooms, it's almost instantaneous pollination.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Then done. It accepts nothing incoming, but there is a chance.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: There's always an error and chance you're to golden doodle.
brett: Well, that's it it. It reminds me again, we were talking about earlier with the like the pollination, the reproduction being the thing that like, even within our goals, the the goal of growing an heirloom or open pollinated tomato,
brett: is twofold. It's to grow a delicious tomato and it's also to produce seeds that we could theoretically save to then grow again.
Plant People: viability true to top yeah
brett: With a hybrid tomato, we're literally just growing it for that fruit and we're done and we're getting seeds again the next time.
Alexis : Thank you.
Plant People: you can't say yeah you can't say because and then i would be like an f2 generation you would have known parentage from the f1 producing a very you know predictable offspring but beyond that all bets are off people
brett: All right.
brett: or and And the reason the reason why i think the it will produce viable seeds that will grow into a plant.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: That's the thing that it's like, it's not like it's, yeah, it's not like this is forbidden that you can't, can't ever do this.
Plant People: So will apple trees.
Plant People: No.
brett: But, but what with the, the hybridization stuff, where you're taking, and this is not genetic engineering. This is old, good old fashioned breeding.
Plant People: No.
Alexis : Old school breathing.
Plant People: Just, oh, yep.
brett: Just, just exactly like the dogs. You put, put two tomato plants in a room together and not exactly, but ah put them in a room together and let the magic happen. And then they have a little baby seeds that we'll have, but, but usually you'll have one that has some sort of trait that you want for the fruit.
Plant People: Diceous.
brett: And then you'll have this other one that will have that might have some other trait. It has terrible fruit. They're tiny, they're bitter, they're whatever, but it's really good at resisting diseases or something like that.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: And so then the offspring might look like it's, in that case, it's dad, which was the one that had terrible fruit and couldn't produce stuff.
Alexis : It's
brett: And so that's why, that that to bring it home to me personally, that's why when we have a tomato growing in our compost heap, And Annie's like, no, we can't kill it. I'm like, but why though?
brett: ah
Alexis : going to be an ogre.
brett: It is not going to be anything remotely like what? Yeah, it's going to be terrible. And then it's going to be.
Plant People: franken-tomato.
brett: Yeah. So anyway, I just had to get that off my chest.
Plant People: Sometimes, Brett, though, it's like eating gas station sushi, Brett.
brett: i've been carrying that. was me
Plant People: When you when you lose you lose big, you have a plant that's not very good.
brett: Roll the dice, baby.
Plant People: But when you win, we've gotten some very good apple varieties that were totally from actual naturally occurring crosses.
brett: True.
Plant People: Now, what crossed? We don't know. But once you get a good one, Brett, you get a good one. So it's gas station sushi. But most of the time, yeah, you're absolutely right.
brett: That's right.
Plant People: You wouldn't want to try to plant the seed from a really good apple variety for the same reason. You have no idea what you're going to get from that because at that point it's a random genetic cross.
Plant People: You know, that's like trying to predict, you know, what people's kids and grandkids are going to be like. You can't because it involves outcrossing. But yeah, it's a good point.
brett: so the...
Alexis : It's the Punnett Square!
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: So the, can we get it, can we do a quick bonus lightning round of, uh, grafting terminology for apples since we have the, and like in that example, the one that's really amazing.
Plant People: Yeah. So...
brett: We don't know what crossed with what, but we really like it. How would we get, how would we turn that into more apples like that?
Plant People: Yeah, I guess just to keep it real simple, you have top stock and bottom stock scion, which literally means child. That's the wood you would collect from an own variety.
brett: And that would be the top stock.
Plant People: That would be the little water sprouts, people call them, or whips, pencil thin or smaller. You pick some of those during the dormant season, February, March, and then you have known rootstock with its own qualities.
Plant People: And a lot of the disease resistant package and things like that, the anchorage, that i'll the the ultimate size of the tree, Alexis, that's the biggest thing, comes from the rootstock.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Dwarfine.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: So the rootstock, give certain qualities, but the actual variety comes from the genetic material, the the plant material you collected from, in this case, let's say apple tree, the cyan wood, S-C-I-O-N.
Plant People: My Appalachian, I have to spell that out because it sounds like I'm saying cyan wood, S-I-G-N.
brett: Scion. Scionwood.
Plant People: It's cyan wood, which means child, but ah you then would put that onto the root. There's a lot of different methods to do to do that, but top stock,
Alexis : and graft it onto the rootstock.
Plant People: Yeah, grafted on. And that's how you get true to top apple varieties or most fruit trees are like that to get um ah true varieties. Otherwise, I mean, you would not know what you were getting.
Plant People: But yeah, grafting, that's how we get, you know, ah known varieties.
Alexis : this
Alexis : And the same terminology is used in all grafting. So like tomato grafting and like melon grafting has become a much bigger thing because of root, not nematode issues.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah, really cool.
brett: Huge.
Alexis : So they're getting resistant root stocks with heirloom. Like they're getting resistant root stocks, but grafting a lot of the times heirloom varieties onto those resistant root stocks so that they get the heirloom and the benefit of the resistance.
Plant People: I
Alexis : And the melons, there's, you know, cases where it's happening with melons and stuff too, but um It's the same terminology, c scion and rootstock, no matter what it is, if it's grafting, it's always those two terms.
Plant People: do you
Plant People: and like tomatoes. There's ah there's different types of grafting, like bud grafting or chip grafting. I mean, but still the concepts are the same. You're you know grafting one plant material onto...
Alexis : Yeah, there's different types of grafting.
Plant People: Yeah, yeah.
Alexis : that's So very true.
Plant People: There's different types of grafting.
brett: Yeah, we're not going we're not going down that rabbit hole.
Alexis : But if you're...
Plant People: No, no, no.
Alexis : Yeah, yeah, yeah.
brett: isn't it
Plant People: But yeah.
brett: ah But I will say, that yes, and kate but in case you are wondering on the tomatoes and stuff, yes, that does mean you're growing two plants for every plant that goes in the ground.
Alexis : We've got some plant propagation stuff coming up, so...
Plant People: Oh, yeah, that's true.
brett: You are taking it and you're cutting it and you're putting the other one into it so that they merge together all for it to grow for one season. That is how, and so that sounds like a lot of work compared to an apple tree that's going to last for a number of years.
Plant People: A long time.
brett: But that's how desperate people are to deal with some of the pest pressures and and disease pressures and other things.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: Pretty amazing.
brett: i mean, it's becoming very common. And if you're good at grafting, you can get really fast. But nevertheless, it's it's a whole other step besides just dropping ah a a seed in ah in a dibbler, in a dibbled tray.
Plant People: Oh, yeah. yeah
Alexis : is it
Plant People: It's just but but botany. In the background, it's just botany doing what botany does.
Alexis : But speaking of speaking of tomatoes, I'm segueing in here. I've got another term for you because it happens a lot in tomatoes is another fun word.
brett: Look at that.
Plant People: oh Oh.
Alexis : i like I'm liking the fun words as my botany term.
brett: BLT.
Alexis : I've got a really good one for you. But this one is called vivipery, which is such a fun word.
Plant People: Ooh, I like that. Bacon.
brett: Oh.
Alexis : It's such a good mouthfeel.
Plant People: That's one that really gets people excited, Alexis. It does.
Alexis : Vivipery. And so if you...
Plant People: It gets people excited.
Alexis : gets people It gets the people going.
Plant People: Literally.
Alexis : So if you've ever cut in it to into an arena
brett: ah woman It sounds like a dressage horse.
Alexis : and Vivipri has entered the the arena, I'm loving it. ah
Plant People: whom It's really cool.
Alexis : My next dog, Vivipri. Hear him then.
Plant People: It's a cool one. That's a cool one.
Alexis : but
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : But we we see it a lot in tomatoes. It can happen in a bunch of different things. But tomatoes especially, you know people tend to see it. So if you bring one home, you cut into it, and all of the seeds are starting to sprout, that is vivipari.
Alexis : And so a lot of – you'll see – my favorite thing is when I see them all on, like, social media and people are like, these are the monster tomatoes and they're GMO. And I'm sorry I'm giving a country accent.
Alexis : They could be a ah Brooklyn.
brett: do
Alexis : It doesn't matter.
brett: Give us a Brooklyn accent.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: British accent.
Alexis : I will not be doing that.
brett: Give it a go. Just give it a try.
Alexis : No.
brett: Make it up to it make it up to the people.
Alexis : I can't. I can't. I'm too nervous.
brett: ah
Alexis : oh
brett: For those listening, Alexis is turning a bright shade of red right now.
Plant People: She's like, I have stepped in it and bread is making it so much worse.
Alexis : Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I know I felt bad. I was like, i my accent comes out sometimes.
brett: look at these. Look at this these these monster tomatoes.
Plant People: But how many, how many times, Alexa, know a tomato how many times did you get people?
Alexis : ah
Plant People: It really gets people excited. And it does look very striking when you cut a tomato open and things growing in it.
Alexis : It is. It can be scary like if you don't know what it is.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah. And so it's just um the hormones ah in those seeds that make them right temperature, a bunch of different things can kind of come into that.
Plant People: Yeah. Temperature. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexis : And it just – the seed says, hey, this feels like a pretty good place to start doing my thing and're even though they're not out because the seed probably you know really doesn't know if it's in a nice warm tomato.
Alexis : That's a moist environment.
brett: Totally.
Alexis : It's warm. It thinks it it could think it's in the soil, right? So if you think of it that way, um there's some other triggers that can go into it. But don't panic. You don't have a monster tomato.
Alexis : It's any plant can you know potentially do this. Any seed can potentially this.
brett: I've seen it in peppers before too.
Alexis : Huh?
brett: ah I've had peppers peppers cook before.
Plant People: Oh, have you been peppers?
Alexis : What?
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Peppers. Yeah, yeah, I've seen it in peppers before too.
brett: Like bell peppers.
Plant People: Bell peppers.
Alexis : Solanaceous crops especially seem to be digging that in, but in the summer especially.
Plant People: Yeah, that's right.
brett: Ready to go.
Alexis : Yeah, they they're like, let's go, baby. We got one chance.
brett: mean
Alexis : So Vivipary.
brett: Yeah. Endless summer.
Alexis : And that one will make you seem really smart when, you know, your aunt posted on Facebook and is freaking out.
brett: Let's go.
brett: Vipery. It's
Alexis : You can be like, actually, it's Vivipary.
brett: technically the dressage horse Vi Vipery caused that to happen.
Plant People: Some of these terminal terms are pretty wild and that's a good one. That's a really good one.
Alexis : there
brett: one note One that we said earlier that we did not clarify that may be worthwhile when we were talking about leaves and is the word node.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. We use that a lot.
Plant People: One of the most important concepts. Yep.
Alexis : Yes.
brett: And this is not social network analysis where, for instance, Ray knows a lot of people and so he functions as a node within that. But it's kind of similar. It's a point where lots of different things can and do come off.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: but
Plant People: Point of differentiation.
Alexis : I didn't know that was used that way.
brett: Yeah, yeah.
Alexis : I'm learning about pop culture things.
brett: Yeah. Social network analysis, baby, that, you know, you have these, these things where like, um, you know, like for instance, Alexis, you are now a node between the extension agent community and also the, like kind of campus employees community or something like that.
Plant People: Venn diagrams and all that.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: Um, but on a plant, which is cool, always cooler, uh,
Alexis : Gotcha.
Alexis : Okay. Totally.
brett: it's I mean, generally it's like where you see that the leaves or buds are attached to a plant, that's sort of like a node.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: And so ah the... What you'll also hear along with that is the inter node, which is literally just the space between nodes. And where where you can observe that is that like you'll have a branch, particularly if a tree is growing pretty quickly or a plant's growing pretty quickly, you'll have some leaves that are coming out of it.
brett: And then there'll be a space on the stem and there'll be another leaf coming out of it or another set of leaves or whatever coming out of it.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Deep axle.
brett: So the nodes are where those leaves are coming out and there will be at the base of that leaf at the axle. Is that right?
Plant People: defax on
brett: At the axle, this is the angled space between there. There will be a little bud that will often form that can either that can could become a new branch or whatever. But anyway, the space between is called the internode space. The actual area where it comes out is called the node. This is particularly important for things like uh pruning it's also important for things like propagation because you you sort of want to pay attention to where the nodes are because um they yeah if you just sort of cut off a dead stick with no node or anything on it and and put it in it's not really necessarily gonna do anything i mean so some stuff like
Plant People: Very important. Oh yeah.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Yeah. That node is your hub. It's your hub of there's a lot of um hormones local um located there that are just waiting to be given direction. and so But what I mean by that is um they they can become roots, they can become a branch, they can become florals, they can you know they can become a leaf.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : you know There's a bunch of different things. And so The environment um might dictate that, you know, the plant the species itself. But that's your that's your little hub of all of all the good stuff is on that note.
Plant People: Lots of sales that are just waiting.
Alexis : it's ah
Plant People: Yep.
Alexis : Yeah, sometimes it's like a little bit of a swollen area, especially on trees. You'll notice like kind of these little swollen rings going up the branch. But yeah, that's your that's your main hub of goods.
Plant People: And that that affects everything on plants.
brett: Also, yeah, everything.
Plant People: I mean, it's crazy to form everything. Yeah.
Alexis : Mm hmm.
brett: Well, and like you if you are, let's say that you or someone you know is ah somewhat of an amateur arborist and you have cut off a tree limb and you just cut it off at a random spot, you will see, and you could actually see it in the bark, could see it, ah but that it will often, if you just cut it in a random spot, it will die back, but only to a certain point.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: And then it will sort of cut off all the resources. And so you'll have a tip of that thing that you cut off. It's all brown and degrading and dried out, but the rest of it, it'll send, it can send out new shoots. Cause again, at that node, there's all this opportunity for stuff to grow, but that's why when you're pruning it's recommended to cut up close to the node so that the tree can just wrap its tissue around that, heal it and grow rather than having this dead thing out.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Wound would.
brett: and I think to.
Alexis : That's another use of those hormones. It says, oh, I have been injured.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : I must become a band-aid now.
Plant People: I mean, a few if you ever wanted to make more plants more compact, whether it's a garden mum or your basil plant, well all the only thing you're doing is manipulating um that node-internode relationship.
Alexis : It's crazy.
Plant People: You're pinching down to a stem that's got you know two other little stems. You're pinching off the internode down close to the node, and then that one stem coming up makes two stems.
Plant People: So you get a more compact interaction. And it's amazing. You do that with bays on, gosh, you got a three foot wide plant if you just keep pinching it when a stem grows up and you pinch it down to another.
Alexis : That's really big in cut flower world. like a I would say 75% or more, that's probably really low, of cut flowers are pinched in some way.
Plant People: Is it? Yeah, I figured that makes sense.
Alexis : like That's a term. And so we're removing that. It's called the apical meristem, which is that tip, that node at the top that is...
brett: Like the apex, the apex of it, the apical.
Alexis : It's the apex, yeah, it's called the apical merosem. You're pinching that off, and that means to a node, and then that node is like, oh, I got to grow two. And so every basically every time you pinch, you grow two. And then cut flowers.
Alexis : We might do a pinch early before anything blooms, but then every time you're cutting, that's why we say, um we tell people who are growing cuts to cut really deeply, because every time you're cutting, in theory, you're cutting it kind of back to a node, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : And you're doing a pinch with every time you harvest. And so you're pinching and then boom, you get two stems for every one stem you cut. Obviously the plant has to be healthy, blah, blah, blah. But like, that's the basic theory.
Alexis : And so by cutting low, you get nice long stems when you get those next set of two stems.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah, the golden rule of pruning is always, it's one thing all over and over again.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: And it's this concept Brett brought up, nodes and internodes, but you always prune back to a living point. Well, what's a living point? Well, that's a node. It's ah a point where it has all these cells that are ready to do something.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: So you, yeah.
Alexis : We usually like, yeah, we keep it easy and we say cut back to a branch um or or the or the trunk, which is you know essentially one big node, but we'll say cut back to another branch, you know and but what we're saying is cut back to a node um is really the the science behind it.
Plant People: Main trunk. Yeah. Yeah.
brett: Right.
Plant People: Yeah. I leave him. Yeah. Yep.
brett: And sometimes you can tell where the node is and sometimes it's a little hard, like, especially if the buds are really small, if it's out of leaf, you know, if you're cutting it in early, it can be hard or it can be kind of intimidating, but like I,
Plant People: Yep.
Plant People: It's hard to know.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: like when I was printing, I was printing some red buds out front this year and I i cut them back to a node, but it was not in at the, it wasn't back to a branch. So it, for a while it looks dumb because it's a stick cut off with this little bud at the end, but then it grows and everyone knows that I'm the one laughing now.
Plant People: Yeah. who But you look for the buds.
brett: Yeah, that's right.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah. but And you know, it's interesting in the apple world.
brett: um
Plant People: Um, when my father had an orchard in the East part the state, uh, Even before I came along, i guess it was an uncommon if they weren were pruning apple trees, you know, go up and see the the guys damage, you know, these ah bud areas with their thumb.
Plant People: And they were directing branching because they would damage that growing point area. And that trauma would cause branches to break in the direction of that trauma. And so they would just take their thumbnails and they totally controlled the growth of the tree with their thumbnail.
Plant People: They would cut branches, and they went when they wanted a bud to break to the left or right,
Alexis : That's crazy.
Plant People: to direct, you know, outward growing trees to get more sunlight penetration. He would just take his thumbnail up there and damage that a little bit.
Alexis : At the node.
Plant People: And finally I asked him and he said, well, that's what I'm doing. He said, I'm, you know, the oxens of the plant. And he, he like put it in terms a certain way, but I looked it up years later and that's what he was doing.
Plant People: He was kind of ah disrupting the flow and that area of plant compounds, but they just did it
Alexis : And so it's, so the, the branch is going to go towards the wound because it's going to like seal that or it's going to go away from it.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Part of it is with the flow of oxen. It has to do with that. Part of it is the trauma that I learned. So it's a combination of the two things together. And now they probably didn't look at it.
Alexis : Oxens are those hormones I mentioned.
Plant People: term Yeah. That's what the, the, the flow of hormones, they probably didn't look at it in botanical terms. They just knew that it worked. So you can manipulate bud break, you know, limb differentiation through that.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: i don't know, Brett, does that get into any, I'd be surprised if that didn't get into some bonsai kind of work stuff.
brett: It does. There's actually this really fascinating podcast about...
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: So so in bonsai, you're generally... When you're doing bonsai itself, you've got a tree that's already got most of its branch structure developed. But there's this whole problem of how do we get trees to the point where they would make really cool bonsai?
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: And so there's these people who were... They there they were out in Colorado doing some... ah Called Telperian farms, if we have any fans of... um literature, ah but the um they they grew trees into finish boneai But in the process of that, they have to like basically try to get branches to pop wherever they want it to go.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: He didn't use the nail technique, but like there's there's things of where like you you would take um ah a particular shoot and at a time of year where a tree was had a capacity to put on a second flush of growth, you would remove something with apical dominance or reduce it.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
brett: in order to then drive energy back to the, be able to create buds in other places. You expose that to sunlight. You can also do things like, um, or oriented, like the way that a branch is oriented will determine, um, how exactly it's exactly.
Plant People: And that's manipulating that chemical. Yeah. Yeah.
brett: Cause that's the thing that people don't necessarily understand about plants. I think sometimes is that, um, There's no like pump that is moving things. It's entirely this really interesting and beautiful network of like passive plumbing that is happening where like up at the leaves, the air you know blows across the leaf and it creates the tiniest little sucking, like sucking on a straw that puts pressure on the whole thing.
Alexis : moisture loss yeah
brett: Yeah. And then the, the exactly the moisture loss up there is like sucking it up. So that pulls it up through the roots and it's the same way. And then the, the, the, the flow of how the chemicals move throughout the plant are in part determined on whether it's upright and vertical, whether it's out, whether it seems like it's the highest or whatever.
brett: And that there's all kinds of stuff, but it's a very common thing to try to, because we're trying to keep it small to reduce that apical dominance, but also try to manipulate how and where buds come out.
brett: There's also grad. We also, they also do grafting and stuff like that too, but.
Plant People: So much science behind that, because if you go too much or too little, it doesn't work properly. If like, ah if you go too much to the horizontal and then you have water sprouts because you lose the total apical dominance, even though the terminal bud is still present because it messes up the gravitational flow of the oxen, which is interesting.
brett: Right.
brett: yeah
Plant People: It's crazy. And in fruit, we manage that a lot.
brett: It also has to do with how how old the tree is and how like vigorously it's growing.
Alexis : you
brett: that's That's a part of the equation across the board.
Plant People: yeah.
brett: You know, like I would be willing to prune something that's a little bit more vigorous and strong because I know it's going to bounce back. But but the part of the point I was going to say with that was the the guy who was talking about doing this, he was sort of called in as the tree whisperer at this farm to do a lot of pruning and stuff like that.
brett: And he had spent like 30 years in the ah nursery and landscape industry. you know So that's where he cut his teeth on just knowing how plants work and these kind of exactly like what you're talking about.
Plant People: It's fascinating.
brett: I bet he's familiar with the thumbnail trick.
Plant People: But ah you'll see that they'll do limb spreading in orchards.
brett: Mm
Plant People: And it's that's more common in the old semi-dwarf orchard.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: It's still common. But part of that is you're managing density just with the angle of the branch being just right. you well It makes a strong branch, but you're managing the angle just right to have minimal water sprouts, but also a strong branching angle.
brett: hmm.
Plant People: And there's a whole science behind that that's pretty fascinating.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: It's good stuff. Yeah.
brett: It's even to the point like so if I'm if I'm growing a tree and I'll stop talking about bonsai, but if I'm If I'm growing a tree and I want a branch to get thicker, what I want it to do is to elongate. However, I might want that branch to come out from the tree and go downward and go up.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: But what I will do is I will shape the branch with wire and then the tip, I will always point back upward. And that is enough to, to, ah to sort of stimulate that oxen production and and, and trigger it to extend.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: And if I don't do that, it doesn't grow the same. It's very, very cool.
Alexis : yeah that's uh something like in vanilla production so it will not form flowers unless the vine is upright and so you can have like a really you know, beautiful vanilla and it, and it's cause it's a vine, right?
brett: hu
Plant People: Hmm. Hmm.
Alexis : It's kind of crazy. They don't always crawl. They can sprawl. And so if, you know, you got one going down, it won't form any pods, but if you get it upright, um those flowers will form and can be pollinated to create vanilla bean.
brett: Whoa.
Plant People: Hmm.
Alexis : I know. Yeah. I went, I learned that.
brett: What the heck?
Alexis : I was like, what?
Plant People: Probably a similar type of concept that we're talking about because that's the way it wants to be.
Alexis : Yeah. It's just, it's the hormones form.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : um I guess it just knows the, you know, plant has, a place to hold on and get light and nutrients and all that other thing.
Plant People: Yeah. Maybe it's an indicator.
Alexis : But yeah.
brett: Man, that's cool.
Plant People: Botany. Just when you think you know it all, then you're like, I'm just scratching the leaf axle.
brett: ah
Plant People: just Just getting started. Yeah. It's ah it's it's fun. ah Botany can be pretty fun. It can be kind of heavy at times because it's it is vocabulary heavy.
Alexis : who There's so much vocab.
Plant People: Yeah. But they just the concepts themselves are pretty fascinating from a very practical standpoint as, you know, just gardeners or commercial growers Particularly for home gardeners, it's just ah endlessly fascinating with how we get, you know, fruit production or berry production or floral crops or how do we make this basil thick or there's cut flower thick and full and yeah just all the things that we've talked about today.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: It's pretty fascinating. It's good stuff.
Alexis : Yeah, it's all realistic.
Plant People: Good stuff.
Alexis : That's what it's what I like as a gardener.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Alexis : I like the the realistic ones. you know I mean, Megaspore Mother Cell sounds really cool, but like I'm not, other than my sweet band that I'm going to have, it's not super relevant to making sure I can grow things well, right?
Alexis : But knowing that my cover crop can kill my seed with allelopathy or, you know, knowing knowing what how to identify a black walnut um based on the leaf margin and the petiole and the compound leaf so that I don't plant my tomatoes there and have allelopathy is important and practical, right?
Alexis : So... Hopefully you guys got something beneficial out of that. If there are more terms that you're like, I have heard this. I don't really understand it. What is the difference between these? Please leave us. you You can send us an email that you can find that in the show notes. You can shoot us a message on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcast. um You can also leave us, as you're leaving us five stars and say, I want more botany terms, please tell me about XYZ.
Alexis : You can do that. It does help the show. I know it gets gets's annoying. All podcasts, every podcast I listen to you always says that, but we say it for a reason. It does please the algorithm and hopefully more people will find our podcasts this way and and learn some new botany terms.
Alexis : But anyways.
brett: And we're not like other podcasts. We're cool podcasts.
Alexis : We're the cool podcast. Yeah, we're the cool plant people. um But we appreciate you guys being here with us.
Plant People: All plant people are cool.
Alexis : And we hope that you will, join you we hope that you'll contact us and we hope you'll join us next time. Have a great one.
