UW Botany Greenhouse

Lat.: 47.652349451369396 Lon.: -122.31024686535949
Day, 2012
4/5/12
1:30-3:00

Today we visited different sections of the UW Botany Greenhouse. I don't recall what the first section was called but there were many leafy green plants and it was humid and warm. The most interesting parts of this section for me were the Lodoisia pam tree with its double coconut (and world’s largest) seeds, and the Monstera deliciosa. What interested me about this plant is that it grows as a vine where it is dark. Once the vines make it to a tree, the plant becomes phototropic and its leaves turn from heart-shaped to being huge with holes. The reason for the holes wasn’t known but they could be there to let rain through if the plant doesn’t need that much, to let sunlight through for lower plants, or to make the leaves look like they’ve already been eaten by bugs. It would be interesting to know the actual reason for their holey appearance.

With Susan we went into the “Desert” section of the greenhouse, which was very dry and inhabited by many cacti and other pokey plants. Interesting here, was the Welwitschia. This plant is native to the Namibian Desert where it hardly ever rains. However, at the UW greenhouse, Doug watered the plant and it is now thriving more than it would’ve had it been in the Namibian Desert for the same amount of time. This shows that the Welwitschia doesn’t actually prefer living in the desert. This was interesting because it made me think of all the other plants that may not actually prefer their current or native habitats. But there’s really no way to know unless you remove it and test it.
With Josh, he showed us the Synsepalum dulcificum or “miracle berry” that changes your sensory perceptions so much that it can make you taste the sweetness of a lemon. It was interesting to learn that this sweetness is actually always there but we just can’t taste it because it is masked by all the sourness. Josh also showed us the ghost chili, which is the hottest chili in the world, about 10 times hotter than a habanero. We learned that the heat of a chili doesn’t affect our taste buds, it affects the pain receptors in our brain telling us we are in physical pain when eating a hot chili. In this was, the plant is “fooling us” because this apparently doesn’t happen to birds (who may be evolved to eat chilies).

Species List:
Theobroma
Lodoisia maldvia
Monster delisiosa
Western hyasin
Dischidia
Welwitschia
Pepperoni
Venus fly trap
Serasenia
Epiphyte
Dracula orchid
Chiles
Soma sensory berry

Posted on April 26, 2012 07:58 PM by lisad22