diversity and productivity sitting in a tree

reply to my thread about florida natural farming (fnf)...

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when i was a kid i would religiously read the peanuts comic strip. lucy would often offer to balance a football so that charlie brown could kick it. each time, at the very last second, she would pull it away and he would fall flat on his back.

fnf has several large inga trees and each time he says that they are going to finally fruit, but every time, at the very last minute, they trick him.  it’s a bit entertaining and endearing.  

i don’t think that i’ve ever heard fnf mention that fruit trees near the ingas grow extra fast, which is interesting because check this out…

the cacao on the left isn’t growing anywhere near any ingas, while the cacao on the right is growing in an inga alley. fake news? the slide is from this video on inga alley cropping, which i only recently learned about thanks to the wikipedia article on mycorrhiza. here’s the wikipedia article on inga alley cropping.

naturally i was quite curious if it has ever been discussed here on tff, and it has been, albeit briefly…about the inga genus. in that 2017 thread there were only 4 participants, one of which was pineislander. he was there. where were we? not there.

one time, nearly a decade ago, at an orchid show i started talking with a random guy. he mentioned something about the orchidboard, and i told him that i was on there as well. i asked him what his username was. when he said what it was, i realized that he was the guy on there who told me to go f myself because he thought my views on orchid conservation were heretical.

flauro01, hint matthew 5:38? nope, i didn't turn my other cheek, i quickly lost all interest in talking with the guy and exited stage left. if i had been a little forgiving then i'm sure that i would have learned some useful stuff from him.

i only made 1 comment on fnf's videos, and he deleted it. in his video he said something about being overwhelmed trying to do everything on his own, so i commented that i’ve met a lot of young and enthusiastic plant people via my local facebook plant group who have been more than willing to lend a hand in my garden. my comment wasn't even vaguely negative or critical, so the fact he deleted it was very off-putting. fortunately, in this case, being so much older and wiser (hah) i just barely managed to turn the cheek and i continued to watch his videos, and i’ve learned useful stuff from them.

sure, it would greatly help fnf's cause if he was more like fff planting garcinias together with an enthusiastic young person, but that's just not who he is. just like most of us don't regularly video document our garden efforts, endeavors and experiments. we all have room for improvement.

in my book, fnf's shortcomings are eclipsed by his crazy cool achievement of growing such a wide variety of crazy cool plants without any irrigation. so it's awesome to see him back on this forum again. if we can all try to turn the cheek, then there's lots of useful stuff that we can learn from each other, such as whether ingas actually do help nearby fruit trees grow faster, via mycorrhizae.

in the wikipedia entry on mycorrhizae there’s a section on orchids. orchids are unique in that their seeds do not contain the energy that they need to germinate (exceptions to the rule). on the one hand, this allows the incredibly small seeds to travel considerable distances on the wind, but on the other hand, the only way that they can germinate is if they get lucky enough to land on a spot where they will be penetrated by a suitable  mycorrhizae. the orchid seed will take the energy it needs to germinate from the fungus, but it doesn't kill it. the fungus takes up residence in the roots of the seedling.  if the orchid seedling is growing on a tree (epiphyte!), then as its roots grow longer and more numerous, this will help the fungus colonize the tree and more of its spores will spread to other trees, which will help to germinate the orchid's seeds.

here's my 2014 attempt to illustrate orchid roots facilitating fungi colonization of its tree...

in 2011 i sowed a bunch of different orchid seeds on my deodar cedar tree here in the los angeles area that has orchids and other epiphytes growing on it. i was hoping that some of their roots contained the helpful fungus and it had spread all over the tree, but i wasn’t holding my breath. so it was a very surreal surprise, to say the least, when i noticed several tiny green boogers (aka protocorms) magically appear on the sunny side of the tree on completely barren bark...

i immediately started to inspect every inch of the tree and found several dozen protocorms. what was rather fascinating, is that all of the protocorms were located within 1/2" of the roots of the mature orchids on the tree. evidently, in my dry conditions, that was as far as the helpful fungus could travel from its moist home inside the succulent orchid roots.

it turned out that all the orchid seeds that germinated on my tree were from laelia anceps, an orchid native to mexico. another fascinating thing is that the orchid roots in the above picture were from a dendrobium speciosum, which is a distantly related orchid native to australia. the two orchids are so distantly related that they can't be crossed. i also found laelia anceps protocorms growing right next to roots of vanda tricolor, a distantly related orchid native to indonesia. these two orchids are even more distantly related, given that their forms are completely different (sympodial vs monopodial).

where was the fungi from? was it just 1 variety? in any case, it’s important to appreciate that the fungi facilitated an exchange of resources between very distantly related orchid species.

it took nearly a decade for the 1st laelia anceps seedling to bloom.

a couple years ago i removed a division from the 2nd laelia anceps seedling to bloom on my tree and i sent it to my online friend keith in tampa so that he could attach it to his tree in order to try to innoculate it with the beneficial fungi in the orchid’s roots. he actually recently upgraded to a real life friend when i met him in person. a couple months ago i visited florida for the 1st time and he was nice enough to give my friend and i a garden tour. keith is so cool. he's young but already so knowledgeable. he's trying to select coconuts for cold tolerance. and he has a big vanilla (pompona?) vine growing on his tree…

the vine flowered and he successfully pollinated it. unfortunately he forgot to save some seeds for us to test if they are also an exception to the rule of no stored energy, but i managed to turn the other cheek, hah.

i don't think that fnf has any vanillas or coconut palms? keith only has 1 garcinia. if only there was a super fungi that could facilitate the exchange of resources between them.

does this forum function as a super fungi? well, honestly, the ourfigs forum software is far more super at facilitating communication. when i visit that website, in the upper right corner i can see a red notification number indicating how many…

1. of my subscribed threads (example) have been replied to since my last visit
2. times i've been quoted
3. times i've been tagged (ie @epiphyte)

when i click on the red number it takes me to a page with a list of links to the relevant content. it's an incredibly useful feature because it greatly facilitates communication.

here, on the other hand, if i mention k-rimes, will he notice it buried underneath this avalanche of text and pics?

flauro01 doesn't think it's useful to donate to this forum, hint john 3:16. imagine the democratic version... god loved the world so much that he voted for it. in this case, nobody would be a christian. nobody would have any conclusive evidence of god's love for humanity.

imagine being at a huge botanical garden. after hours of walking around trying to look at every plant, you sit on a bench, which has a plaque, "in loving memory of elmer lorenz". you're sitting on tangible evidence of someone's love for elmer lorenz.

let’s say that you donate $5 to this forum in loving memory of fnf. ok, he's still alive. even better. your personal sacrifice helps to pay for an upgrade of this forum's software, so not only would the red notification greatly facilitate communication, but it would also be tangible evidence of your love for fnf.

if we don't know what's truly important to each other, then resources won't be distributed accordingly. this is equally true for plants and fungi. for a lot more info, presented in an accessible manner, check out this youtube video… A Peek Into the Wood-Wide Web: How Plants and Fungi Communicate Underground.

k-rimes is correct that we can't completely dry farm here in desert southern california, unless we only want to grow things like catalina cherries and figs. but the fascinating question is, how much less would we have to water our eugenias and garcinias if we stood on fnf's shoulders? roblack already alluded to this.

i recently dug up a big jacaranda tree that had been in a pot. it had thoroughly rooted itself to the ground, which was a problem because it was pressing against a wood fence. right next to the jacaranda was a plain green ti-plant (cordyline fruticosa) which, surprisingly, turned out to have big succulent storage organs. here's perhaps a quarter of it next to the jacaranda roots...

wikipedia calls it a "rhizome" but it seems more like a tuber (it’s edible?). for the sake of comparison, here are my two spondias tuberosa seedlings that i bought from bellamy trees in august...
   

despite the presence of a white irrigation pipe, the jacaranda and cordyline were in an area that i never watered, but the jacaranda roots definitely reached distant areas that i did water, albeit irregularly. so did fungi facilitate an exchange of resources between the jacaranda and cordyline? when the jacaranda did have access to a lot of water, it should have traded some water, sugars and lipids to fungi for nitrogen, phosphorus and other minerals. then the fungi would have traded water and the rest to the cordyline for sugars and lipids. when the jacaranda did not have access to a lot of water, then it should have "bought" some from the fungi, which would have bought it from the cordyline.

a couple days after digging up the jacaranda and cordyline, i dug up a volunteer camphor tree that was also pressing against the same wood fence. it was a couple feet away from a tangerine tree. in between the two trees was an ornamental shrub from africa, rotheca myricoides, that i had planted as a cutting before the camphor volunteered. i spent some time removing dirt from around the roots of all 3...
     

is it a coincidence that the rotheca was growing directly on one of the camphor's main roots, and one of rotheca's main roots was tightly wrapped around the camphor's tap root? it might not be obvious from the pic but the rotheca's roots are quite succulent. it's more obvious in this pic of the mother plant from 2 years ago...
 

it had been growing in a big pot right next to the house. an elm tree volunteered in the same pot and i kept kicking the can down the road (my superpower).  the result was the most intimate and loving embrace possible between a tree and a shrub.    

the elm and the camphor were by far the fastest growing volunteer trees in my garden, and they were both right next to a rotheca, coincidence? the volunteer trees were good at collecting water, when it was available, and producing energy, while the rotheca was good at storing water.

The truth of the principle, that the greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification of structure, is seen under many natural circumstances. In an extremely small area, especially if freely open to immigration, and where the contest between individual and individual must be severe, we always find great diversity in its inhabitants. For instance, I found that a piece of turf, three feet by four in size, which had been exposed for many years to exactly the same conditions, supported twenty species of plants, and these belonged to eighteen genera and to eight orders, which shows how much these plants differed from each other. So it is with the plants and insects on small and uniform islets; and so in small ponds of fresh water. Farmers find that they can raise most food by a rotation of plants belonging to the most different orders: nature follows what may be called a simultaneous rotation. Most of the animals and plants which live close round any small piece of ground, could live on it (supposing it not to be in any way peculiar in its nature), and may be said to be striving to the utmost to live there; but, it is seen, that where they come into the closest competition with each other, the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders. - Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species 

Cadotte's experiment showed for the first time that species with the greatest evolutionary distance from one another have the greatest productivity gains. "If you have two species that can access different resources or do things in different ways, then having those two species together can enhance species function. What I've done is account for those differences by accounting for their evolutionary history," Cadotte says.

[...] Distantly related plants are more likely to require different resources and to fill different environmental niches -- one might need more nitrogen, the other more phosphorus; one might have shallow roots, the other deep roots. So rather than competing with one another they complement one another. - Productivity Increases With Species Diversity, Just as Darwin Predicted 

Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another; the different produces of their respective talents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of other men's talents he has occasion for. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Commerce is now what war once was, the principal source of this contact. Commercial adventurers from more advanced countries have generally been the first civilizers of barbarians. And commerce is the purpose of the far greater part of the communication which takes place between civilized nations. Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress. To human beings, who, as hitherto educated, can scarcely cultivate even a good quality without running it into a fault, it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing their own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances from themselves: and there is no nation which does not need to borrow from others, not merely particular arts or practices, but essential points of character in which its own type is inferior. Finally, commerce first taught nations to see with good will the wealth and prosperity of one another. Before, the patriot, unless sufficiently advanced in culture to feel the world his country, wished all countries weak, poor, and ill-governed, but his own: he now sees in their wealth and progress a direct source of wealth and progress to his own country. It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race. — J.S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government

darwin and smith both noticed the connection between diversity and productivity. smith knew that for people this was because of trade, but neither of them knew that the same was true of plants of fungi. the current division of labor between economics and biology is… questionable.

an elm tree and camphor tree are definitely dissimilar to a rotheca shrub, just like a jacaranda and cordyline are definitely dissimilar. they can benefit from each other's considerable differences, thanks to fungi facilitating trade between them, at least in theory.

fnf has numerous variegated cassava / tapioca plants (manihot esculenta) growing in his garden. these also have large tuberous roots. the closest fruit tree seedlings should grow faster, at least in theory. just like the fruit tree seedlings near the ingas should grow faster, at least in theory.

the theory is sound, but correlation doesn't mean causation. of course it would be nice to have more data.

anyone ever heard of the miyawaki method? it's basically a way to quickly grow forests. one of its main tenets is to densely plant the seedlings. they say that the competition for light results in 10x faster growth. the thing is, reaching light depends on resources, and resources are more better distributed by underground markets that are densely packed, given that plants and fungi aren't as good at long distance trade as we are.  my jacaranda and cordyline were practically growing on top of each other, same with the camphor and rotheca, and the elm and the rotheca.

the main problem with the miyawaki method is that another of its main tenets is to only plant natives. this is completely counterproductive given that there’s far less difference in plants within a country than there is between countries. less difference means less productivity.

for most of us in california, garcinias are painfully slow. if we only grew achachas next to the most suitable plants native to bolivia, then the achachas wouldn’t grow nearly as fast as they would if we planted them next to the most suitable plants in the entire world, in theory at least.  needless to say that the entire world is far more diverse than even the most diverse country.  

it will be interesting to see whether plants that store moisture below ground will be more suitable trading partners for garcinias than plants that store moisture above ground. the vanilla growing on keith’s tree doesn’t have any sort of tubers, but the leaves, stem and roots are relatively succulent. a big vanilla plant can certainly store quite a bit of water.

since 2020 i’ve been growing vanilla chamissonis (brazil) outside in a pot. earlier in the year i attached it to the base of an evergreen pear tree, pyrus calleryana. here’s a recent pic…
     

the vine on the left, which is currently around 3' long, is new.

i also have a variegated monstera deliciosa (thai constellation) growing on a noid ficus tree…

the monstera roots are relatively thick, long, succulent and numerous.

if a monstera, vanilla and dragon fruit were all growing on the same tree, then they’d all be a lot happier together than they would be growing separately? denser diversity means a better market, which means a better distribution of resources, which results in greater productivity.

for a while now i’ve been collecting aroids so i really love that fnf is growing a bunch of rare ones up his trees. sadly he’s the exception rather than the rule among rare fruit growers in suitable climates. seems like satya is also exceptional, i’d sure love to see some aroids in his videos on youtube.

hemiepiphytes are wonderful, but they aren’t nearly as wonderful as epiphytes. i brought some of my favorites to florida. in the hotel room i made 8 bundles (epiphyte bundling method) by attaching the epiphytes to a dense pad of sphagnum moss using fishing line…
 

here’s the list of plants that i included in the bundles…

anthurium lanceolatum
anthurium scandens
anthurium scandens xerophytic form
columnea joel*
columnea orange sherbet*
columnea erik hybrid*
columnea schiedeana x joel?* (seeds i sowed on the mounts)
echeveria rosea x coccinea*
epithechea orange blaze* - (psh. mariae x epi. radicans) x epi. cinnabarinum
kohleria inaequalis*
microgramma nitida
microgramma vacciniifolia
kalanchoe orangery*
kalanchoe uniflora*
kalanchoe wilma*
rhodospatha red hybrid
sinningia piresiana x leucotricha?* (seeds i sowed on the mount)

*pollinated by hummingbirds

i gave the bundles to keith so that he could attach them to his trees. his main tree was already more diverse than most of his neighbor's entire gardens. unlike here in california, the epiphytes on keith's tree have the potential to colonize his neighbor's trees and so on. i should have included some live green moss on the bundles…

Preliminary experiments indicate that the ability of the bark to absorb and retain moisture is multiplied several times by the fungus. The added absorbing and retaining capacity enables bryophytes to become established. Other experiments have shown that epiphytic liverworts, mosses, and ferns increase the power of the bark to absorb and retain water still further. - William T. Penfound and Faith Pennebaker Mackaness, A Note concerning the Relation between Drainage Pattern, Bark Conditions and the Distribution of Corticolous Bryophytes

here's a pic i took after partially unpacking the brazilian guava seedlings that i recently received from giant gecko...
   

the seedlings didn't come from brazil, he sowed the seeds himself and in media which might have been sterile. so no fungi? well, sadly it's too small to see, but i did notice that there was some live green moss starting to grow in a few of the pots. if moss colonized the pots then chances are good that some fungi also colonized the pots. but what were the chances that there was a variety of fungi that i didn't already have? the chances were pretty good since, according to wikipedia, there might be around 3 million different species of fungi. for many years now i've been collecting and spreading moss around my garden in order to try and maximize fungal diversity.

here’s some moss growing on the succulent roots of a cattleya orchid growing on my cedar tree…
 

also on the cedar tree, there’s a relatively succulent fern, lemmaphyllum microphyllum, from japan growing on a big bunch of sphagnum moss, with live moss struggling to colonize the hard bark…
 

earlier in the year i received 2 luc's garcinia seedlings from abimael777 in puerto rico...
 

there wasn't any moss on the medium, but given that the seedlings were relatively large and from puerto rico i was pretty sure that there was some fungi. so i took all the medium that fell off the garcinia roots and thoroughly mixed it into a big batch of medium to use for other fruit trees.

fnf definitely doesn't do this... because microplastics... he throws away all the medium that comes with the plants he buys. personally i'm pretty sure that he’s throwing the baby out with the bath water, but i could be wrong. the durian that he recently bought from larafarms most likely had fungi within its roots, and i'm guessing that even a thorough washing of the roots wouldn't remove the fungi, but what are the chances that it would be happy in the exact spot where the durian was planted?

a year ago i visited costa rica for the 1st time. i stayed at paraiso volcano lodge which is at the base of miravalles volcano in guanacaste province. for most of the drive from the airport to the lodge, the habitat was dry forest, so the trees were mostly naked, then i started seeing more and more tillandsias on them. next, on the living fences, i spotted more and more orchids and then more and more ferns growing on them. by the time we arrived at the lodge the living fences were covered in an amazing variety of epiphytes…
 

moss, miniature fern (microgramma) and miniature orchid (pleurothallis). it was definitely a rain forest.

Within a forest, total bark surface greatly exceeds that of ground area and can be more densely packed with plants. Rooting media in canopies are also diverse, although whether more or less so than soil is unclear. In effect, tree crowns may be especially permissive habitats that foster dense species packing for vascular and nonvascular plants alike. - David Benzing, Vascular Epiphytes

fnf grows an impressive variety of plants on the ground without any irrigation, but there’s at least twice as many species he could grow on his trees without any irrigation. any given tropical dry forest (tdf) only has a few species of epiphytes, but since there are so many tdfs all over the world, there’s a huge number of epiphytes capable of tolerating relatively dry conditions.

in theory, dense epiphyte bundles of diverse species should facilitate the exchange, via fungi, of water, nutrients and other resources, which should result in greater productivity. i’m sure in florida, especially with the help of hemiepiphytes, epiphytes can also exchange resources with the trees that they are growing on.

each epiphyte species supports a wide range of organisms.  for example, here in socal i have a 7’ inga in the ground that i’ve attached several epiphytes to, including a few bromeliads…

if you look closely you can see a native tree frog. it’s easier to see the frog next to this brom…
 

even though these frogs are native to socal they are naturally drawn to the water that is held in the center of the broms.

one frog was drawn to some hoya australis (an epiphyte) flowers in order to feed on the pollinators attracted by the flower’s strong nocturnal fragrance. unfortunately for the frog, a praying mantis had the same idea…
  

more life, and death, and nutrient cycling, and growth happens when trees have more epiphytes. fnf has a bunch of broms, which is cool, but they are all on the ground, so it’s only 2 dimensional diversity instead of 3 dimensional diversity.

in one video fnf remarked that the brom flowers are often visited by hummingbirds. here’s a pic i took of a hummingbird visiting one of my tillandsia aeranthos in bloom…
 

not sure exactly why, maybe because of the hummingbirds, but out of all my tillandsias, aeranthos is by far the best at volunteering in my garden. it has volunteered all over my cedar tree, well, wherever it gets watered by drip and/or by hand. when they bloom i often see hummingbirds hovering up and down the tree visiting each of the flowers. i'm curious why i haven’t seen or heard of this tillandsia naturalizing in florida.

one of the most fascinating relationships between an epiphyte and another organism is that of ant plants, such as the orchid myrmecophila. it has big hollow pseudobulbs that ants live in. i didn’t think that this would happen with my myrmecophilas here in socal, so it was a shock when i cut off some old dried pseudobulbs and ants poured out of them…
 

ants from argentina were living in an orchid from mexico. admittedly, ants are a big pain in the butt because they are so good at farming pests such as aphids, scale and mealybugs, but more of these pests also means more of their predators…

recognize the predator? i only learned this year that it’s probably a hoverfly larvae. it’s eating green aphids that were eating the buds of an encyclia orchid. here’s a hoverfly larvae eating yellow aphids eating a new tendril of a hoya fungii…
 

here’s a beetle eating an isopod on some sphagnum moss attached to a tree…

here’s an alligator lizard in microgramma vacciniifolia fern (brazil) and kalanchoe uniflora (madagascar) probably following a fresh slug trail…

 

if you want wolves you need to have enough mice, rabbits, deer, moose and so on. we all want more options…

One would think that man could find enough variation in the orchid family, as it occurs in nature, to more than satiate his taste for variety. Yet man's appetite for variety is never appeased. He has produced over two times as many hybrids, in the past 100 years that he has been engaged in orchid breeding, as nature has created species in her eons of evolutionary effort. - Calaway H. Dodson, Robert J. Gillespie, The Botany of Orchids

in this thread hammer524 asked how many vendors were at previous sales of the san diego crfg chapter. we all want more vendors. plants also want more vendors. fungi also want more vendors.

Dry forests would surely support richer canopy-based floras if Tillandsia extended beyond tropical America. - David Benzing, Vascular Epiphytes

hummingbirds should also extend beyond tropical america. there’s riches in niches.

in summary, a denser and more diverse network will discover and capture more resources, such as pineislander finding the thread about inga alley cropping. then it’s a matter of correctly determining how the resource should be distributed. if pineislander has noticed that garcinias grow faster when they can easily trade with ingas, then he should have the opportunity to easily trade a donation (to this forum) for the option to direct more of our attention, which hopefully includes that of fnf and keith, to his observation.  whether a resource is attention or ideas or nitrogen, its distribution should be determined by sacrifice rather than by votes, because then and only then, will productivity and progress be maximized.