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Plant Biology
Long Live the Trees
As fortitude goes, Survivor man has nothing on our leafy companions.
If you’re looking for the ultimate survivor forget the wimps you see on television. A U of I plant biologist has discovered tropical tree seeds that can survive almost 40 years underground before germinating.
James Dalling and colleague Tom Brown of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory studied seeds in the soil on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and determined that the seeds of Croton billbergianus (Euphorbiaceae), Trema micrantha (Celtidaceae), and Zanthoxylum ekmannii (Rutaceae) survive in soil for 38, 31, and 18 years, respectively.
Dalling germinated seeds at sites where they suspected that trees were particularly persistent. Brown then carbon dated samples from the seed coat using a modern radiocarbon signal that is a consequence of atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s before a test-ban treaty went into effect.
The finding answers the old question of how long certain tree species can survive “disturbance events,” or periods where trees are killed and only seeds remain. This is 10 times longer than previously believed.
By Dave Evensen
September 2009
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