Subject: Re: TEN THINGS I DON'T KNOW ABOUT PLANTS
From: [email-masked] (Pamela Hall)
Date: 2 May 1994 19:48:14 GMT
Newsgroups: bionet.plants

1.  How does water get up a tall tree?  And don't just repeat the
explanations in a standard physiology text book, check the literature.
The question has been very inadequately answered by both botanists and
physicists. It is a good example of the interdisciplinary approach.
Subsidary questions include; Why are the tallest trees only 100m?  Why
does water (rainfall, flooding) effect the height of forests (why are
some swamp forests short and others tall?  Why are some rainforests tall
(temperate rainforests, mean of ~70-80m) and others shorter (southeast
Asian dipterocarp forests, mean of ~50-60m) and others even shorter
(lots of the neotropics, especially Central America, mean of ~25-40m).

2.  How does the world stay green when so many creatures eat plants?
How do plants protect themselves?  Why can long-lived host plants out
survive short-lived rapidly evolving herbivores/pathogens?

3.  Why are there the number of species we observe in each ecosystem?
Why do some genera have so many species and others very few?  Why do
some genera have so many coexisting species and others very few?  Why
are the temperature forests so low in species, especially in Europe?
Why are there so many Ericaceae in the fynbos, so many Dipterocarps in
Borneo?

4.  How do plants of the same species flower at the same time?  Or do
they? (check out the aseasonal tropics).  What are the cues for mass
flowering or masting years?  Why are the patterns of phenology variable?

5.  What is a plant species?  Why do we use a vertebrate definition?
What has the biological species defnination got to do with oaks?  What
are reproductive boundaries for plants?

6.  Why do we, as humans, persist on so few plant species?  Or do we?
What is the contribution  to world nutrient of the noncommon grains and
legumes? How did we domesticate all these species, or did we?

7.  How do plants respond to changes in atmospheric chemistry?  To
changes in rainfall regimes?  Will agriculture be affected by human
induced global climate change (whatever its magnitude)?  Will the
boundaries of ecosystems shift?

8.  Has there ever been and can there ever be a "sustainable" harvest of
plant material?  Were "ancient" agricultural systems "sustainable"?
What is "sustainability"?

-ph
Dr. Pamela Hall
Harvard Institute for International Development
One Eliot Street
Cambridge, MA  02138 USA
Phone: 617-495-4248
FAX: 617-495-0527
EMAIL: [email-masked]