Another Garden Thug—Castorbean

I have observed recently that certain plants bring a mix of good and bad traits to the garden. In some cases, a plant’s positive characteristics can offset the negative ones. As a result, the gardener might want to include the plant in this landscape and accept the reality that it will require “special handling.”

One such plant is the castorbean (Ricinus communis), also known as the castor oil plant. This is a member of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), native to the southeastern Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa, and India. It grows as a large shrub that can attain a height exceeding thirty feet. The popular garden varieties, however, grow to ten feet or less.

The plant has several positive qualities, foremost being the striking appearance of its leaves, which are palm-shaped (palmate) and dark reddish-purple in color, becoming green with age. The shrub grows fairly quickly, and the gardener can control its shape with regular pruning. Also, being native to a Mediterranean climate, the castorbean, once established, is drought tolerant in the Monterey Bay area.

Castorbean leaves & seeds

Castorbean seeds, leaves and flowers

Another positive quality is the plant’s usefulness for medicinal, insecticidal, and industrial purposes. There are several medicinal uses, including as a laxative. The greatest commercial value of the beans (actually seeds) is for motor lubrication. These applications do not, however, contribute to its value in the garden.

The negative qualities must be acknowledged. First, the raw seeds are extremely toxic when chewed. They have been described as the most poisonous in the world. The seeds can be attractive and tasty-looking, but as few as four-to-eight seeds can be fatal to an adult. If you have this plant in your garden, you should ensure that neither children nor pets have opportunities to sample the seeds.

The plant is also strongly allergenic. Its pollen can trigger asthmatic attacks, and its sap can cause skin rashes.

Another negative quality is the castorbean’s tendency to propagate itself by dropping seeds. My plant has generated several crops of seedlings within a circle about thirty feet in diameter, centered on the mother plant. How the seeds plant themselves well beyond the plant’s drip line remains a mystery. The seedlings grow quickly up to three feet in height, but are easily uprooted. They do not transplant well, so I have not potted them for other gardeners. They might have inspired mixed reactions, especially by gardeners with children or pets.

Despite its toxicity and allergenic potential, the castorbean is grown for its ornamental value throughout the world in compatible climates. This reality demonstrates the appreciation of avid gardeners for plants that bring unique contributions to the landscape.

For at least some gardeners, the castorbean’s reddish-purple leaves are more important than the effort involved in protecting against the plant’s poisons and eradicating its unwanted progeny.

Each gardener must make such decisions for his or her own garden.

Talking About Gardening

A popular activity whenever gardeners get together is for someone to give a talk. This links the speaker’s desire to share what he or she knows about gardening and the listener’s thirst for learning something—anything—about the enduring mysteries of horticulture.

Often, there are pictures.

When a speaker addresses the methods, techniques, or practices of an aspect of gardening, the presentation amounts to teaching. When teaching equals performance in the front of the room, good teaching (according to some studies) requires the teacher to have knowledge of the subject, have a positive attitude toward the subject, and to be prepared.

The same basic criteria apply to talks about gardening.

Being prepared, in particular, means having specific goals for the talk, organizing the information for clarity, and providing a level of detail that is right for the audience.

More is needed, however, for the talk to be successful. The additional criteria apply mostly to the method of the presentation:

  • Speak loudly enough for everyone to hear
  • Make eye contact with audience members
  • Listen to questions from audience members (and observe their body language)
  • Restate and respond to individual questions so the full audience can hear
  • Know when to stop

The Internet contains more ideas for effective public speaking. Many recommendations are about the style of presentation, e.g., incorporating humor, adding personal anecdotes, pausing occasionally for dramatic effect, etc.

With many familiar recommendations like those listed here, we might expect generally successful talks about gardening, but really good presentations are actually exceptional.

A recent presentation for the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society exemplified a good talk on gardening. The speaker was Gunnar Eisel, a long-time college professor of music theory and history, a long-time collector of cactus & succulent plants, and general manager of the Cactus & Succulent Society of America.

His experience in public speaking was made evident when he appeared fully equipped with his own computer, digital projector and a sound system of very good quality. Clearly, he had one too many encounters with inadequate technology provided by his hosts.

Gunnar Eisel titled his talk, “From Windowsill to the Poor House: Building and Maintaining a Cactus and Succulent Garden.” He organized his information in sections: Why Collect?; Kinds of Collections; Sources of Plants; Right-sizing Your Collection; Visual Tours of Selected Collections; and Culture Recommendations.

His presentation reflected his deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for his subject, and maintained the rapt attention of his audience for about one hour with good pacing, well-selected images and short video clips, and friendly humor.

Once you’ve enjoyed a really good talk on gardening, it’s tempting to be rough on speakers with less expertise, but this talk has inspired the Society to develop a tip sheet for its future speakers on gardening topics. That is work in progress. Sources of potentially useful ideas include the website for Great Garden Speakers, which provides links to gardening experts, and Jeff Haden’s “20 Public Speaking Tips of the Best TED Talks.”

Not every garden group is prepared to bring in outstanding speakers, but expert gardeners who share their expertise with others can refine their presentation skills.

The Future of Genetic Engineering

When projecting the development of genetically engineered foods, we first acknowledge that no one really knows what we might find on grocery shelves in the future.

It does seem likely, however, that consumers will not be given much information about their food products.

Last week, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 63-30, passed a bill to establish a uniform national standard for labeling foods with genetically engineered ingredients.

Everyone supports a national standard for food labels. There’s nothing good about having each state require unique labels.

This legislation, however, provides a deeply flawed national standard for labels.

  • It does not penalize non-compliance, making it essentially voluntary.
  • It does not require simple, on-package labels, but allows the use of QR codes that can only be read with a smartphone.
  • It defines GE foods in a way that exempts a great many foods, as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration noted.

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said, “Here is a so-called labeling bill, but in fact it does the opposite…this so-called mandatory labeling bill isn’t mandatory, doesn’t label, and it excludes most GMO foods.”

The primary effect of the bill, then, is to preempt related state regulation in favor of this federal non-response to widespread consumer interest in knowing about their food.

The Senate bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, which had already passed similar legislation and very likely will support the Senate’s version. The margin of approval appears to be enough to override a presidential veto.

What will GE technology produce in the future? We have already heard of so-called Arctic Apples that don’t turn brown as they age, crops that have chemical pesticides added internally, and several crops that are resistant to synthetic chemical weed killers. Each new food requires federal approval before it can be marketed, but approval is based on the producer’s own testing.

Recent advances in genetic engineering technology called CRISPR can be used to modify organisms by editing existing genes. This technology has enabled faster and cheaper tinkering with both flora and fauna: reportedly, a high school student with a little training and inexpensive lab resources could edit genes.

The products of gene editing do not involve the addition of foreign DNA and therefore do not require federal approval. Apparently, gene-edited foods also will not require labeling to indicate how they differ from natural foods.

The competitive marketplace will be the principal control over our food supplies. That could lead to interesting and valuable results. When novel products become popular (and some probably will), their prices will rise. There have been claims that labeling GE foods as such would increase prices, but those claims were never shown to be accurate.

Federal regulations already control which foods can be labeled as organic, and do not allow GE foods to be identified as organic. It remains to be seen whether foods with edited genes could be identified as organic. For now, consumers who are wary of foods that have been engineered, one way or another, should buy only foods that are labeled as organic.

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Controlling a Garden Thug

I recently described the Alstroemeria, a Chilean plant, as an example of a passalong plant, one that is desirable and also prolific in growth.

I also mentioned that this plant “produces large numbers of tubers, so many that it can be difficult to dig into a long-established bed.”

Since then, I have confronted such a bed in my garden.

Alstroemeria

A Cluster of Alstroemeria (click to enlarge)

The Peruvian Lilies (the common name for Alstroemeria) had overwhelmed a border of Avens (Geum chiloense), smaller plants in the Rose family, which are also native to Chile.

Two Aven cultivars, ‘Lady Stratheden’, with rich yellow blossoms, and ‘Mrs J. Bradshaw’, with rich scarlet blossoms, have earned by the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.

Over a few years of growth, the Astroemerias had taken over a ten by ten-foot bed. Their tall flower stems had flopped into the garden path, and their tubers had spread under an edging of Sonoma fieldstones.

This is a plant that has much to offer but needs controlling.

As it happened just then, my gardener brought a new assistant, a strong young fellow with gardening experience and a pressing need to be gainfully employed. Perfect!

He made short work of the Alstroemeria bed. Rather than being tentative, I asked him to dig the plants out entirely. I intended to have him reshape the bed, and then replant a few tubers in the spirit of starting over.

There were two varieties of Alstroemeria in the bed: pink (shown in the photo) and apricot. Red, orange, purple, green, and white varieties are also available, with some searching. My helper dug out the pink-flowered plants and left the apricot varieties, which were located apart and not yet causing problems.

This work filled a large green waste cart with foliage, and four garden tubs with tubers! A dozen or more lunch bags filled with washed tubers were snapped up quickly from the Garden Exchange’s giveaway booth at the Garden Faire. The plant will be able to pursue its destiny in several other gardens.

The garden bed appeared to be Alstroemeria-free and ready for a fresh start, but a quick examination discovered a significant number of loose tubers lurking in the bed. Only tedious sifting of the soil might banish this plant from the area.

Assuming a positive attitude, we concluded that this is really an attractive plant after all, and the loose tubers made replanting unnecessary. The tubers surely will sprout in the near future so ongoing control involves plucking out seedlings that appear in the wrong places.

Being something of a “garden thug,” the Peruvian Lily has been recognized as a garden-worthy plant. The Royal Horticultural Society had given its Award of Merit to several cultivars: ‘Apollo’, ‘Coronet’, ‘Friendship’, ‘Orange Gem’, ‘Orange Glory’, and ‘Yellow Friendship’.

The lesson learned from this experience is that some plants, like some people, require more attention than others.

Battles over GE Labels

The battle over food labeling continues!

In the last week of June, 2016, a U.S. Senate Committee proposed legislation that would mandate labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Side note: Some news reports refer to labels for “genetically modified organisms” or “GMOs,” but the correct term is “genetically engineered organisms” or “GEOs.” Genetic modification includes hybrids that result from human intervention or natural processes, all within a single species. In comparison, genetic engineering involves transferring genes from one species to another. That’s very different!

This bill, called a “compromise,” appears to respond to the vast majority of consumers (up to 90%) who want to know if foods in grocery stores have been produced with genetic engineering. The bill calls for a “National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard.”

Consumer groups might applaud this bill but instead they are outraged. The bill includes a two-year delay and big loopholes, and lacks enforcement, but here are the two biggest objections:

First, the bill prohibits states from requiring food labels that differ from the federal standard. Requiring food manufacturers to follow the same rules in every state makes sense for everyone, but this bill proposes lower standards than have already been adopted legally in Vermont, and that go into effect on July 1, 2016.

Second, the bill allows food manufacturers to choose from several kinds of labels, including a text, symbol, or electronic or digital link to a website (but not a printed web address). Smaller manufacturers could provide a telephone number to ‘Call for more food information.’ By comparison, Vermont’s law requires food packages to have printed statement in words indicating the presence of GE ingredients. Consumer groups prefer the use of simple statements, and are critical of less accessible forms of information. In particular, they dislike the option for digital QR codes that the consumer must read with a smartphone to connect via the internet to information on GE ingredients.

Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association said the law “replaces the requirement for clear, on-package labels with a convoluted, inconvenient and discriminatory scheme involving barcodes and 1-800 numbers.”

Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety said, This kind of labeling system is inadequate and inherently discriminatory against one-third of Americans who do not own smartphones and even more so against rural, low-income and elderly populations or those without access to the internet.”

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has promised to place a hold on this legislation. Under Senate rules, a hold will require at least 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to overcome.

Senator Diane Feinstein of California wrote to President Obama years ago asking him to direct the Food & Drug Administration to revise its 21-year old policy that GE is “not necessarily a material fact that must be provided to consumers. She wrote, that surveys have shown that “genetic engineering is clearly of material importance to American consumers.

Wise people do not predict the actions of Congress, but I’m hopeful that plain text labels will eventually become the law of the land.

Vermont’s law is already being followed in some nationally distributed products because food companies do not want state-by-state labeling. Forward-looking companies have begun labeling their products as “GE-free” or “Contains GE ingredients,” and prices haven’t risen at all as a result.

Remember, too, that we already have federal certification of organic foods, which cannot include genetically engineered ingredients.

Click to read the Stabenow Bill on Food Labels.

To see the opposition to this bill by consumer groups, visit the websites of the following groups:
Organic Consumers Association,
Center for Food Safety, and
Just Label It.