Advent Botany: Caraway

Can you imagine stepping outside your house and wading out onto a reef to collect seaweeds and shellfish for your lunch? Or talking the dog for a walk into the nearby forest, hunting for mushrooms and foraging edible plants to go with them?

In Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs I take a look at some of the journeys familiar plants have made across the globe, and touch on their arrival in previously inhospitable places – underwater, Antarctica and even outer space. Since writing it I have become increasingly interested in the idea of plants in space, and have blogged about some of the current projects (lettuce on the ISS, and a ‘Mars’ greenhouse in Hawaii, you can scroll through the posts by selecting the space blog category). Researching the history of plants in space has proven to be quite a challenge. It’s not that there’s no information available, it’s that there’s a *lot*, and it’s a fascinating topic. Tracking down one piece of research inevitably brings up something new and shiny, and you’re off down a rabbit hole. It occurred to me that it’s a bit like a maze, and I thought we could treat it like a Choose Your Own Adventure story.

It started at the garden centre, where I was helping to put newly arrived plants out in the autumn/winter ‘tub and basket’ display. There’s a good range of ornamental plants on offer, all looking very cute in their youthful stages, in various colours and textures. They might not have the showy flowers of summer bedding, but they’re all interesting plants. The winter garden doesn’t have to look dull! The ones that caught my eye were Gaultheria ‘Very Berry’, cute little plants with dark green leaves, white bell-shaped flowers (they look exactly like little blueberry flowers, because they’re related), and quite large berries ripening from white to pink (ultimately they should go red).

It’s common to hear Americans talk about their exciting experiences at Space Camp. It’s not often that students in the UK get to work with astronauts on a space experiment, but that’s exactly what’s on offer next summer at Mission Discovery – King’s College London 2023.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Michael Wilkinson, a teacher who’s bringing astrobotany into classrooms with Magnitude.io. Michael talks about the ExoLab series of experiments, which ‘leguminaut’ is blasting off in 2021, and how a Bitmoji teacher will be able to tag along for the ride!

In my space blog posts and episodes of the Gardeners of the Galaxy podcast, I use the word microgravity a lot. But what is it, exactly? This video, produced by the UK Space Agency and the Open University explains what microgravity is and the value for scientists of creating a ‘weightless’ environment on Earth.

In my space blog posts and episodes of the Gardeners of the Galaxy podcast, I sometimes mention experiments carried out during a parabolic flight, or on a zero-g plane (AKA Reduced-gravity aircraft) – often referred to as the “vomit comet”. This video, produced by the UK Space Agency and the Open University explains how scientists use microgravity environments to understand how planets form, by taking a queasy ride in a plane.

The physical effects of spending time in space are very similar to the natural ageing process. In fact, we can learn a lot about ageing by studying how microgravity affects astronauts. But that’s expensive, and it’s much cheaper for people to stay in bed!

A human being is less a single individual and more of a commune of organisms. Wherever we go, we take our microbiome with us – and that includes space. Astronauts spend some of their time keeping the International Space Station clean (housework follows you when you leave the planet!), and there have always been concerns that a microbe that’s harmless here on Earth may mutate into something nasty in a microgravity environment.

At the end of last year, NASA published a round-up of its Best Space Station Science Imagery of 2022. All of the images are worth a look, but of course I am particularly interested in the ones that involve space plants:

Yes you can grow Eucalyptus in the North of England although the mosaic below was created largely from Australian leaves by Robyn Jay.

The English-born Capon, a doctor of botany from the University of Chicago who went on to be a professor at California State University, Los Angeles for 30 years, has since retired, leaving time for the revamping of “Botany for Gardeners,” the bestselling title for its publisher, Timber Press, in the U.S. and England.Not only did Capon write it; he illustrated it, too, and even took the plant photographs that further bring the text to life. Capon is also a lifelong gardener, though images of his own place never appear in the pages.“Botany for Gardeners” was born as a textbook out of lecture notes for a botany class Capon taught for many years to non-science students, so it’s thorough—but not the kind of dense, full-fledged botany text that will scare you away.In fact (even 20 years later), it just keeps drawing me back in, especially for tidbits like these. Did you know:That litmus, the dye used to indicate acidity and alkalinity, is