Making Plant Connections
Connecting with a plant that connects with sibling plants
Research and written by Louise Daley based on an article in Mongabay
Any fan of Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, located on the Chicago shore of Lake Michigan, knows the story of Piping Plovers Monty and Rose, who in 2019 became the first of the species to nest in the city since 1948.
Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary
Piping Plover
Last summer, there were almost weekly visits to the sanctuary with my camera and telephoto lens. Among the thousands of photos of birds are hundreds of photos of the latest generation of breeding Piping Plovers. It became apparent in the numerous photos, the role the plant American Sea Rocket played in the welfare of these birds.
This connection between this bird and these plants lead to more research on the American Sea Rocket.
American Sea Rocket (Cakile edentula) a plant in the mustard family Brassicaceae is considered native, while European Sea Rocket (Cakile maritima) is considered invasive. American Sea Rocket provides shade and wind protection as well as attracting insects for the birds nesting on sandy beaches.
Sea Rocket with Piping Plover
The name Sea Rocket, about seven species, comes from its rocket shaped seed pods. Unfortunately, Sea Rocket is listed as vulnerable or threatened. It is a rare plant in Illinois, where it's restricted to the shoreline of Lake Michigan in the northeast part of the state. It has limited habitat on costal sand dunes, which are highly susceptible to erosion from storms and human activities. Some invasive species can outcompete Sea Rocket for resources in its limited habitat.
In an 2009 article in Mongabay, the first study to discover that plants were able to recognize siblings was conducted in 2007 on Sea Rocket. The following is a excerpt of the article:
In the study, conducted by Susan Dudley of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, researchers found that the plants’ roots would not compete with their siblings but instead would ‘play nice’ and share the space. Now, new research published in Communicative & Integrative Biology shows just how plants, lacking vision and smell, recognize which nearby individuals are familial and which are not.
Harsh Bais, assistant professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Delaware, painstakingly studied the reactions of wild Arabidopsis thaliana, (also from mustard family (Brassicaceae) a common flowering plant that has become a favorite for researchers. …..
Sea Rocket with Piping Plover
Extracting chemical secretions from the roots (known as exudates) of his study plants, Bais systematically exposed seedlings to the secretions of their siblings, of strangers, and even of themselves.
The study found that when individual plants were exposed to the root secretions of strangers they pushed out with greater lateral root formation, in a sense actively competing with the stranger for room. When Bais inhibited the root secretions, however, this aggressive push outward stopped. The method then by which plants recognize siblings, Bais discovered, is through contact with root secretions. Something in these secretions tells the plant whether it is related or not.