Episode 152: leaf botany part three - silicon

Transcript

Episode 152

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Jane: This week's On The Ledge is supported by Hoppy, the home management website where you can save money on your household bills and find tradespeople for all those jobs around the home. Why not see how much time and money you can save today at Hoppy.co.uk?

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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast episode 152! It's leaf botany part three. I hope you're still feeling the effects of last week's relaxation episode, but this week we're back to some modern day plant advice. Plant ecologist Dr Julia Cooke joins me to talk about the role of silicon in plants. You have to say that carefully, silicon in plants, not silicon implants! That's a very different kind of podcast! I'll also be answering a question about brown marks on leaves and we'll be hearing from listener MW.

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Jane: Thank you to Laura, Ellie and PlantsManMo and Quoeqe in the US, for some five-star reviews for the show. Thank you to those of you who have joined the Patreon clan in the last couple of weeks; that's Adele, Julia, Molly and Michelle, who haven't formed a girl band! No, they've all become $5 Patreons and therefore Ledge-Ends! Lydia, who has become a Crazy Plant Person. Thanks also to Claire who gave a one-off donation on ko-fi.com. Instructions on how to do all of those things are in the show notes and there's a new option on Patreon now, to pay annually, which gives you two months free, so do check that out. I'll be putting a post out for existing Patreons to explain how that works, but if you're a new Patreon you can opt to pay annually when you join and you will save two months. If you prefer to do it that way, it saves me on costs for transactions and it means less hassle for you, so check that out if that's of interest.

Thanks for all your deliciously wonderful feedback on previous recent episodes. Somebody commented on my Instagram post about the On The Ledge manifesto, that it would make a great poster. This has got my mind whirring, as it often does, thinking forward to the physical mail-out that I send out to Patreons in the month of December; the festive mail out. I'm wondering whether I could think about some way of incorporating that? If you've got a good idea for what I should do for that mail-out, it might be some other form of card, or, I don't know, I'm open to suggestions on that front. I know it seems a long way off, the month of December, but hey, it's coming! Before we know it we will be thrown into the throes of winter, involuntary shudder everybody, but we do have to face it and if you've got any ideas about that mail-out and what you'd like me to send, then do let me know!

I've also been putting out a few of #PerronesPlants, the video series on Instagram where I talk about plants that I own and you get to see my smiling face and my extensive brooch collection. I had a message on one of those videos, it was my Hoya Kerrii video, from Kristen, who said that she'd just got to a safe spot after evacuating from fires in California and she's very happy to see #PerronesPlants after 24 hours of non-stop fire footage and evacuation orders. She says: "I hope my plant babies are safe." Well, so do I Kristen, and to any other listeners who are in California facing evacuation or other horrible things connected to those fires, I wish you all well and I do hope that your plants are okay Kristen and delighted that I can offer you a little bit of light relief in the form of #PerronesPlants because that's what it's all about.

I also have covered recently the Silver Dollar Vine, Xerosicyos danguyi, so if you want to learn about that plant, do go and check out my Instagram where I'm @j.l.perrone. And I'm also very excited because I have the new shelving in my office up and running and I've just received the LED lights that are going to light it up. They aren't officially grow lights but they will be adding to the general atmos and hopefully providing a bit of useful spectrum for my plants. I shall be doing a video on that once I've got it all set up and it's very, very exciting. My office still looks like a bit of a tip. One day it'll be tidy and I'm sure you all know this feeling, it's getting there and it's feeling little bit less crowded now that I've got rid of the rather oversized bookshelf full of my husband's records. Don't worry, they've gone into the house and they've got their own bespoke system and it's all lovely, so don't feel too sorry for my husband!

Just a quick word about merchandise, you can buy On The Ledge merchandise, did you know that? I hope you do. If you go to my website janeperrone.com and click on the shop link in the top right hand corner, it should take you to SpreadShirt, either in the US or in the UK, where you can buy everything from tank tops, to T-shirts, to hoodies, to tote bags, all emblazoned with the On The Ledge logo, or alternatively with the Jane and Wolfie design that was last year's festive card. It's worth checking out. I's a way of rewarding yourself with a bit of merch from your fave pod but also, it helps support the show because a good wodge of the cash goes to me. If you do buy some, do take a photo and send it to me or @ me and I would love to see you wearing your On The Ledge merch and tell me what you think of it. If you're a Twitter maven then don't forget about #HousePlantHour 9pm BST / 5pm EDT. You'll have to work out when that is in your time zone, if that is neither of your time zones, but it's on a Tuesday. I would love you to join me to talk about houseplants, it's just an escape from the rest of the world and a chance to show off your beauties and ask for advice and generally shoot the breeze with other houseplant people. Do join me for that every week. You get bonus points if you turn up and you're an On The Ledge listener. That's quite enough waffling from me, let's hear from this week's listener.

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MW: My name is M. W. Bartlett. I live in Western Massachusetts in the United States. I've been enjoying Jane's podcasts for a couple of years. My father's mother used to work at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and my dad, although he was a pathologist, also loved and cared for plants all his life. I inherited their love for plants, as has my oldest daughter.

Jane: Question one. There's a fire and all your plants are about to burn. Which one do you grab as you escape?

MW: I would save my one little cactus pup from my Red-Headed Irishman Cactus. The original plant belonged to my grandmother and was over 60 years old. Last year, it got rot because I watered it more often than my dad had told me to and I lost the whole thing apart from six pups with which I tried various rooting methods but only one little pup survived.

Jane: Question two. What is your favourite episode of On The Ledge?

MW: This may sound crazy but my favourite episode was the soundscape that Jane did in her potting shed. Sounds are very important to me, they can be either painful or soothing and that one was really wonderful to listen to.

Jane: Question three. Which Latin name do you say to impress people?

MW: I don't say it to impress people but I like to say Syngonium podophyllum because there are so many common names for that plant that, for me and my daughter, when we're talking about plants, it's easier to say the Latin for that one.

Jane: Question four. Crassulacean acid metabolism, or guttation?

MW: Guttation, definitely. It is beautiful, especially when there's some light coming in through the window behind the drop of water at the end of the leaf.

Jane: Question five. Would you rather spend £200 on a variegated Monstera, or £200 on 20 interesting cacti?

MW: I would say I'd rather spend the money on cacti. I love cacti, especially weird ones. The stranger, the better. I'm really not a big fan of variegated plants, so there's my answer.

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Jane: What I love about Meet the Listener is that everybody's answers are so different. So, if you'd like to contribute, drop me a line ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com and who knows, we could be hearing what you think about guttation very soon!

Let me ask you a question. What is a leaf made of? I think most of us would say, when asked this question, maybe we'd say carbon, maybe we'd say water, nutrients, silos, but I think very few of us would mention silicon. Yet silicon can make up up to 10% of a leaf's dry mass. What exactly is silicon? What role does it play in the life of our leaves? In this third part of my occasional leaf botany series, I'm joined by a plant ecologist who spent a lot of her career finding out what silicon is all about.

Julia: My name is Julia Cooke. I'm a plant ecologist. I think of myself as a plant functional ecologist because I'm interested in the role that different species play in ecosystems. I work at the Open University as a lecturer, so my job is a mixture of teaching and research and public outreach.

Jane: A super obvious question to start. What exactly is silicon?

Julia: Silicon is coming into its moment in terms of plants, so I'm not surprised you haven't heard too much about it, but I hope you will in future even more. Silicon is one of the elements. It sits on the periodic table below carbon and it doesn't usually exist just as plain silicon on earth. It's often silica - glass is silica - or in solutions, so it's silicic acid in water. It's often associated with oxygen and then, when it dissolves, it is a component of water. It's very, very abundant on earth. In the earth's crust, it's the second most abundant element after oxygen. So silicon and oxygen together, as silica, are everywhere really.

Jane: Do all plants contain silicon? Is it something that's concentrated in particular plant tissues or is it just spread around the whole plant?

Julia: It is in all plants but the amount in plants varies enormously. Some plants have minuscule amounts, whereas others can have 10% or even more in their plant tissues, so, 10% of their dry mass is a lot. This is enormous amounts. If you think about how much nitrogen or phosphorous is in a plant, the amount of silicon or silica can really exceed that. Some of the plants that are really big accumulators are things like horsetails. You can always feel how grainy they are when you run your hands up some of the horsetails, or the Equisetum. Some people actually use them as sandpaper because they've got so much silica in them. Another family that has loads of silicon is the grasses, some grasses more than others, but most grasses have quite a bit of silicon and sometimes you run up your finger up a glass blade and you get a little paper cut. That is because the edge of the grass has a whole lot of little silica deposits on there and that's designed as a herbivore defence to damage the mouth parts of animals and stop animals eating it, but we see that as a paper cut on our finger tips.

Jane: That is amazing! 10%, as you say, that's a lot of silicon. What's the role? As you say, some plants have got more than others. What's the purpose of the silicon that's in our plants?

Julia: It's a great question because we're still learning about that. The simplest way to describe it is it seems to help plants manage a whole range of stresses. Its main role seems to be in stress alleviation, so those stresses can be biotic, or caused by things that are alive, or can be abiotic, so caused by environmental factors. So looking at the biotic stresses, so plants get eaten a lot by animals and look for ways to, or have evolved a number of ways to, defend themselves and silicon can be very important for some animals. Things like stinging nettles. When you get stung by a stinging nettle, the sting is essentially a little silica needle that injects a toxin into your skin, so without the silica you probably wouldn't get stung by a stinging nettle. They can be very abrasive, so surfaces can be very abrasive and damage the mouth parts of insects and possibly mammals. There can be layers of silicon within a leaf that prevent animals from chewing or eating them as much as they might if there was no silicon. Plants use silicon quite a lot as a herbivore defence and some researchers have found that, once a plant is attacked by herbivores, some plants are able to then take up more silicon to protect themselves when they're under attack. So it can be an induced defence. On the other side, looking at the environmental factors, silicon has been shown to help a lot of different stresses, so water stress, salt stress, it can help manage nutrient imbalances, help manage wind stress, all sorts of things, but if a plant is stressed, adding silicon generally helps.

Jane: As a houseplant grower, this obviously immediately makes me think of my own selfish world and think about whether I need to worry about the silicon in my plants and the amount? I have seen some fertilisers for houseplants recently advertising "includes silicon" and making a big play of this. Is that something that's worth considering? How do plants usually get their silicon in the first place?

Julia: That's really interesting that you've noticed that change. I don't know if that's because people making the fertilisers have appreciated the importance of silica now, adding more silicon, or whether they're reporting silicon that was always there. I'm not sure. Certainly, silicon is applied a lot as a fertiliser in agricultural systems, particularly in rice and sugar cane. As crops are harvested and things, people are removing silicon from the system and depleting the available silicon. It's becoming increasingly popular in fertilisers. In terms of indoor plants, I don't know if there's been a lot of work looking at indoor plants specifically but I know there's a lot of work looking at hydroponics and indoor crop plants where silicon is routinely added and very important. So, I think you also asked how plants obtain silicon, so plants take up silicon through the roots as dissolved in the soil solution or the water solution, as silicic acid, and that goes through the transpiration stream and is deposited all throughout the plant. Often there's more in leaves or the shoots in the leaves of plants but there can be high silicon deposits in roots and bark and wood and all sorts of places in the plant.

Jane: One of the things I've been reading around on the internet, I noticed that it comes up a lot for cannabis websites, I guess that's one of the areas of say, indoor crops, where people are trying to maximise their yields and it certainly seems to be something that cannabis growers are hot on. So, perhaps, as is often the case with houseplants, a lot of these trends and ideas come from the cannabis growing industry and then trickle down to houseplants. It'll be interesting to know if that is the case with this one. Certainly, I've seen a couple of fertilisers that advertise that they contain silicon. I guess, in a pot, there's more of a chance, as you say, that the silicon is going to be depleted. Would there be a reasonable amount of silicon in an average potting mix that you might get, but that would be depleted over the course of the plant's life, presumably if it's sat in the same pot for several years?

Julia: Different soils have different amounts of silicon in them, in total, but they also vary in how much silicon is available for plants. Something like a basalt, that's quite a basalt-derived soil, that might be quite new, might have a lot of silicon that's available. A very old soil that's heavily leached won't have much silicon available. In potting mixes, I guess it depends what's in there and how much organic matter's in there and what that organic matter is. The way silicon returns to the soil is, when the plant dies and decomposes, the silicon in the plant material is released back into the soil and that recycles quite quickly, actually, and can be a better source of silicon than weathering rock surfaces. The way it's recycled is really lovely because when silicon is deposited it often forms the shape of the cell that it occupies or the gap between the cells that it's filled. So, the silica bodies that form in plants are often diagnostic of the type of plants that make them and these plant bodies or plant stones are known as phytoliths, so when the organic component decomposes, which is often quite fast, often this silica part can persist for much longer. So, archaeologists are quite interested in using these phytoliths or silica bodies to recreate past environments and things like that. In houseplant soils it depends what the material in the soil is. It could be quite high if there's lots of organic matter in there and there's phytoliths dissolving and recycling but over a long time I think you'll find it's depleted.

Jane: Why is it that silicon has been a bit of a mystery up until recently? Is it just one of those things that people haven't bothered studying or is there any other reason?

Julia: There's a couple of reasons. I suppose there's so much around that it wasn't clear that it might be limited in some areas and perhaps only becomes limited in places like rice paddies, where it might be an area that's been cropped for hundreds and hundreds of years and with the same crop and the same removal of grains and things, that you see a depletion. In most systems there's just enough silicon around that people haven't noticed, whereas if there's low nitrogen or low phosphorous it's very clear, very quickly. I think, also, for a long time people thought silicon was just a waste product, plants couldn't help taking it up and they had to do something with it, so they just deposited it in their leaves and it was just a storage thing because plants didn't know what else to do with it. Plants do that, do they? They just think: "I'll just stick this somewhere as a waste product!". They're highly optimized. They've evolved to manage incredible situations and they do things just because. I think there were misunderstandings about what silicon might do.

Jane: What's left to learn about silicon? There's lots of different avenues of research right now. What are the key things that people don't yet know?

Julia: We still have an enormous amount to understand about how plants use silicon and the value of silicon for plants, but some of the really big questions, for me, are firstly, what are the costs of silicon for plants? We're getting a really good understanding of some of the benefits and why plants do take up and use silicon to help protect against herbivores and to manage a whole load of stresses. If silicon was so amazing, then why isn't silicon present in all plants, in huge amounts? So, there has to be some costs and we haven't quantified those costs in the same way that we've quantified the benefits. We need to add in that part of the picture. We also read a lot that silicon is a structural component, so there's some classic studies from a long time ago about growing horsetails which have so much silicon in them without silicon and they just don't stand up in the same way. They're dependent on silicon for their structure. So, people have taken this and ran with it and said plants have a structural role, I mean silicon has a structural role in plants, but beyond the horsetail studies, there's actually very little evidence, so we don't understand that. The final big question for me is the relationship between silicon and carbon. So, in nature we don't see any chemical bonds between silicon and carbon, or even silicon and carbon with an oxygen in between. So, they don't really interact with each other very closely, yet we know how important carbon is in plants and everything has these big organic molecules in it. So, how does the silicon fit into that picture? That's a really fascinating thing to find out too. I think it's brilliant that we're seeing silicon pop up more frequently when we're talking about plants and I think that will increase as we understand that plants use silicon and need silicon. So, going back to what you said earlier about noticing that silicon is popping up on fertilisers, I think is so exciting and so brilliant and hopefully when people are talking about nitrogen and phosphorus, we'll increasingly see silicon creep in there.

Jane: Thank you so much, Julia, for sharing your knowledge with us. I think everyone will be checking the back of their fertiliser bottle to see if silicon is mentioned!

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Jane: Thanks so much to Julia for joining me. If you're wondering what that fertiliser that I mentioned was that had highlighted the presence of silicon, it's called Plant Magic. It's not a product I've tried. It's something I saw online, or on a shelf somewhere, and I think it's mainly used by hydroponic growers. Do have a look at your fertilisers and let me know if any are selling themselves on the basis of silicon because it'll be really interesting to know. If there are any other topics you'd like me to cover in this leaf botany series, do let me know. Part four is going to be about pigment. So, if that's something you've been wondering about then, hang on, because we'll get into that in our next leaf botany special.

Now it's time for Question of the Week and this one is in response to a couple of different queries that I've had recently about brown spots on leaves. I have to admit, my heart slightly sinks when I see a question like this because there are so many different things that can cause damage to leaves. From physical - your cat having a claw at your plant, or a toddler who is so fascinated by the leaves they decide to tear a hole in them - to fungal conditions and, of course, pests. That makes diagnosing brown leaf problems quite tricky. Barry got in touch with a question about a newly unfurled Philodendron billietiae leaf and found that there was a translucent spot that feels almost like a blister on the leaf. Meanwhile, someone called LobsterPot got in touch on Instagram with a very similar question about a Calatheabecause theirs was suffering some browning damage. Looking at the pictures of these very different plants, it occurred to me that the problem was still the same and it's this. Lots of us have been experiencing very, very hot days and intense sun, it's the time of year in the northern hemisphere for that to happen, but it can totally catch you out. Even if you aren't a new person to plants. In fact, it's still catching me out to this day, what am I saying!? It's one of those things that does happen. Your plant is in the same position it's always been and suddenly it's getting burned. What's going on? Well, the sun is really intense. Even plants that have been used to that particular setting, when you get those really incredibly bright days, can suffer from sunburn, particularly those young leaves that haven't really had a chance to build up much of a resistance against the strong sunlight and bam! Brown spots are the result. The other aspect of sunburn damage is that the plant struggles more when it's very, very dry. So, if you've got plants that have got really dry soil plus really intense sunshine that is the worst case scenario and the most likely case for sunburn.

What's happening when the leaf gets sunburn? Well, it's basically the pigment chlorophyll is just being destroyed by the strength of the sun and you end up with these blistery brown bleachy areas and gradually as they dry out they'll become like brown tissue paper, basically. The other thing that tends to happen is that people will have a lovely cactus or succulent which is doing really nicely on their sunny windowsill and they'll think "I'll give my plant a treat and put it in my sunniest corner of my patio or balcony" or whatever. Then suddenly the plant looks very distressed and is covered in brown marks and it's mysterious because that plant's a cactus or a succulent and they live in high light conditions, so how can this be happening? In that case, the plant is adapted to the environment that you've had it in for many weeks or months and suddenly moving it to the sunniest spot in your outside space is a very, very different environment and you will find that a lot of plants will burn, even if they're desert plants. It's like me sitting inside with no sun exposure for six months and then going outside into my garden and sitting there at 1 o'clock in the afternoon for an hour and expecting that my small amount of Italian genes are going to save me from being burned! Not the case. Whereas, if I had been slowly building up my sun exposure over many months and then I went outside and sat outside in the garden, I'm less likely to turn out looking like a bright red lobster. As LobsterPot replied on her Instagram, the sun truly is a deadly laser. Skin care and plant care communities agree on this point, indeed! So, when you've got plants inside and they're in exactly the same spot, but it's a very, very intense period of hot weather, it is worth considering moving them to a more shady spot. If you've got highlight plants like cacti and succulents and you want to move them outside you do need to do that gradually, move them to a shady spot first because the intensity of the sun outside is far greater than it is inside. Inside there's lots of things blocking that light coming through full pelt, outside none of that protection exists. You can also get more wind damage outside and then that's adding to the plant's distress too. So, for indoor plants that you decide to move outside, just gradually increase the exposure and start them off in a shady spot outside. Indoor plants, move them somewhere in less light.

There are things you can do if you don't want to move your plant. If you've got a particularly big specimen and you're thinking: "Oh my gosh, I haven't got anywhere else I can put this," then you can always do things like putting an old net curtain over it that's not going to be heavy enough to do any damage to the plant but is going to filter out that strongest light during the heat of the day. Obviously, you can also pull curtains or blinds or any kind of barrier stuck in front of your plant that will protect it from the heat of that sun when you know you've got a heatwave coming and the sun's going to be particularly intense.

The sad news with sunburn, or indeed any other form of leaf damage really, is that the leaf is not going to recover. The leaf will always look like that. With a plant like a rosette-forming succulent, in a way that's the best case scenario because the way the rosette grows, the leaves that are damaged are gradually going to grow outwards and then can be removed. If you've got something like a Swiss Cheese Plant then it's a toss-up as to whether you cut away that leaf and remove it all together, or just leave it there and let other new leaves come along and cover over the embarrassing burns. It's really up to you how you want to deal with it and how bad the damage is.

If you're worried about identifying the difference between leaf damage and browning caused by a lack of humidity, and leaf damage through sunlight, usually the sunlight damage is anywhere on the leaf. The humidity damage will normally be at the tips or sometimes the edges of the leaf, so that's generally how you can tell what's been going on. How do you know that your plant is in a position where it's going to get sunburned in the first place?

If you've got a light meter of any kind then you can measure the different lights in different areas of the room, but really you can just use your eyes and your observational skills to observe this. Obviously, the first thing to say is "Is it south facing?". That's going to be the most intense sun coming from that direction. West facing is second strongest, then east facing and then north facing, but it's also a question of how big the window is, whether there's any obstacles in the way. So, for example, if you've got book shelves that are blocking the light from coming in and making a plant further away, not get so much light, or if you've got net curtains or any blinds up at the window, all of those will be taking away light from the plant. I guess the lesson of all of this is that you just can't sit on your laurels when it comes to your houseplants. Things are changing all the time, from the seasons to your own individual plant's stage of growth, so vigilance is all. Keep a close eye on your plants and you'll notice any changes quickly and be able to respond. Obviously, life doesn't always allow that to be the case, so don't beat yourself up when your plant gets a little bit sunburned or picks up a few bugs. The main thing is how you respond to those challenges and get your houseplants back on track.

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Jane: That's all for this week's show. Thanks to my guest Dr Julia Cooke and to my listener MW for joining me this week. I'll be back next Friday with another episode, but until then I'm channeling the words of The Eagles: "Take it easy, take it easy, don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy." See you next Friday. Bye!

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Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day, Gokarna by Samuel Corwin and Sundown by Josh Woodward. The ad music was Whistling Rufus by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. See janeperrone.com for details.

Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.

This week I find out what why silicon’s so important to leaves, answer a couple of questions about brown spots on leaves, and we hear from listener MV.

Want to check out my Instagram video series #PerronesPlants? It’s here.

Oh, and while I’m promoting all things Ledge, have you checked out my merchandise shop? You can now order in the US so shipping costs are far lower!

This week’s guest…

Check out the links below as you listen…

  • Elemental silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust (oxygen is number one).

  • Silica (a compound of silicon and oxygen) is a component of all leaves, but at different levels - in some plants it accounts for a minuscule amount, but in others, it makes up as much as 10% or more of their dry mass. One example is the genus Equisetum, the horsetail. ‘Grass cuts’ are also down to the presence of silica!

  • Its main role seems to be relieving stress in plants - whether that’s as a defence against attack from herbivores or environmental stresses such as water and wind stress.

  • The fertiliser I mention that contains silicon is Plant Magic, which is a product mainly used for hydroponics.

LEGENDS OF THE LEAF

Question of the week

Lots of listeners have been in touch about sunburned plants recently: either plants they’ve moved outside that got burned, or plants that have suffered scorched leaves in their usual location indoors. very intense sunlight can sometimes burn plants that are usually happy in a spot, so it’s worth paying special attention to houseplants when a really warm day is forecast. The problem is worse when the plant’s soil is bone dry, so try to make sure your plants get a good drink on these days if they need it.

Once leaves are scorched, there’s nothing you can do to repair the leaf, but you can cut it off, or leave it and let other newer leaves gradually take over. When moving plants outside, build up their exposure gradually, even when it comes to cacti and succulents, as plants adapted to lower light levels indoors will still burn when exposed to the far brighter light outdoors, where it’s beaming down unimpeded by windows, walls and so on. Either start them off in a shady spot and move them into the sun gradually, or gradually leave them out for longer and longer periods.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

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CREDITS

his week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day, Gokarna by Samuel Corwin and Sundown by Josh Woodward. Ad music is Whistling Rufus by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. 

Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.

Houseplant scienceJane Perroneleaf botany, siliconComment