The Spread of Carrots

Carrots are one of the staple vegetables in this part of the world as well as in a great many others. Indeed, Wikipedia informs us that about forty million tonnes of carrots and turnips were produced worldwide in 2018, and I would have to think that carrots accounted for the greater part of that number. Wild carrots are also a widespread weed that can commonly be seen growing in disturbed, open habitats such as roadside verges. This post is about the group of plants that carrots typify, the subtribe Daucinae.

Wild carrot Daucus carota in flower, copyright Cwmhiraeth.

Daucinae is a subgroup of the plant family Apiaceae, historically known as the Umbelliferae. The latter name refers to the characteristic production of flowers in dense, flat-topped inflorescences known as umbels. Anyone who is familiar with the appearance of carrot flower-heads is familiar with the form of an umbel; the wild form of carrot is often known as "Queen Anne's lace" in reference to said appearance. The fruit of Apiaceae species is a schizocarp, a dry fruit that splits at maturity into segments (called mericarps), each containing a single seed, that are dispersed independently. In Daucinae and related group of umbellifers, the mericarps carry longitudinal ribs, both primary ribs containing a vascular bundle and secondary ribs without. The secondary ribs of Daucinae are often modified to form broad wings or curved spines that function in the mericarp's dispersal.

Broad-leafed sermountain Laserpitium latifolium seedheads, showing wings, copyright Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz.

Historically, these differences in mericarp morphology have been used to assign the species bearing them to different tribes. However, more recent phylogenetic analyses have indicated that changes between wings and spines have occurred on multiple occasions due to changes in mode of dispersal (Wojewódzka et al. 2019). Mericarps bearing wings are generally anemochorous (dispersed by wind) whereas those bearing spines are epizoochorous (carried by animals, such as stuck to a mammal's fur). The distinction is not 100% immutable: winged seeds may sometimes get caught in fur, spined seeds may be carried slightly further by wind than smooth ones. Phylogenies indicate that anemochory was the ancestral condition for Daucinae, retained in genera such as Laserpitium and Thapsia. Epizoochorous species do not form a single clade within the Daucinae (indeed, the genus Daucus includes both anemochorous and epizoochorous species) but it is unclear to what degree epizoochory arose on multiple occasions versus reversions to anemochory from epizoochorous ancestors. Two species of Daucinae, Daucus dellacellae from the Cyrenaica region of northern Africa and Cryptotaenia elegans from the Canary Islands, have neither spines nor wings on their mericarps which are therefore dispersed by gravity alone. In the case of C. elegans, at least, it has been suggested that it evolved from epizoochorous ancestors that lost the spines because of the absence of suitable dispersing animals on the islands (Banasiak et al. 2016).

Though the carrot Daucus carota is perhaps the most widely grown daucine umbellifer, it is not the only economically significant member of the group. Cumin Cuminum cyminum, whose seeds are widely used as a spice, is either a daucine or a close relative of daucines (Banasiak et al. 2016). Cuminum does differ from other daucine genera in that its mericarps lack appendages on the secondary keels, however. Gladich Laser trilobum is a perennial found growing in Europe and western Asia whose seeds are used as a condiment. Certain species of the deadly carrot genus Thapsia have a history of medicinal usage though, as their vernacular name suggests, their use does require caution. One species, T. garganica, is among the suggested candidates for the identity of the mysterious silphium of the Romans (used, among other things, as an abortifacient) though perhaps not the most likely contender. That, perhaps, is a story for another time.

REFERENCES

Banasiak, Ł., A. Wojewódzka, J. Baczyński, J.-P. Reduron, M. Piwczyński, R. Kurzyna-Młynik, R. Gutaker, A. Czarnocka-Ciecura, S. Kosmala-Grzechnik & K. Spalik. 2016. Phylogeny of Apiaceae subtribe Daucinae and the taxonomic delineation of its genera. Taxon 65 (3): 563–585.

Wojewódzka, A., J. Baczyński, Ł. Banasiak, S. R. Downie, A. Czarnocka-Ciecura, M. Gierek, K. Frankiewicz & K. Spalik. 2019. Evolutionary shifts in fruit dispersal syndromes in Apiaceae tribe Scandiceae. Plant Systematics and Evolution 305: 401–414.

Five-fingers and Lancewoods

Longtime readers of this blog will know that my knowledge of plants has always been fairly rudimentary. As a young'un, I only ever learnt to distinguish some of the more common and visible varieties. As a student, I did take a few botany classes, but only really enough to learn that plant biology is complicated and terrifying. Since then, I've continued in much the same vein. But for today's post, I'm looking at something I do recall being aware of in my youth: the lancewoods and five-fingers of the genus Pseudopanax.

Horticultural variant of coastal five-finger Pseudopanax lessonii, copyright Leonora Enking.

Pseudopanax is a genus of a dozen species of small tree (mostly growing about five to seven metres in height) found only in New Zealand (Perrie & Shepherd 2009). Various species have also been assigned to the genus from locations around the Pacific (China, Tasmania, New Caledonia and Chile) but recent studies have lead to their exclusion. A handful of New Zealand species previously included in Pseudopanax have also been separated as the genus Raukaua (Mitchell et al. 1997). The historical taxonomy of the group is confusing, with species being variously attributed to genera Panax, Nothopanax, Neopanax and Polyscias. Things seem to have settled down a bit in recent years but there is still the possibility we may one day see Neopanax rise again (Perrie & Shepherd 2009).

Chatham Islands lancewood Pseudopanax chathamicus, copyright Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz.

Pseudopanax belongs to the family Araliaceae, a group that is primarily composed of tropical and subtropical shrubs and trees. Araliaceae are commonly referred to as "the ivy family", after one of their best-known members, the common ivy Hedera helix, but, as is not uncommon when a tropical family gets named after one of their European outliers, ivy is pretty weird by Araliaceae standards. Pseudopanax species are perhaps a bit more typical. They have large leaves, often more or less toothed or lobed along the margins. In a number of species, the leaves are palmately divided into three or five separate leaflets, hence the aforementioned vernacular name of 'five-finger'. In one group of species, the lancewoods, the lateral leaflets have been lost and the now undivided leaf is more or less long and narrow. Hybrids between five-fingers and lancewoods may have multiple leaflets like a five-finger but the leaflets shaped like those of a lancewood; New Zealand botanist Leon Perrie has written a post about hybridisation in this genus that you can read here. The trees are usually dioecious (male and female flowers are borne on separate trees) and the individually small flowers are borne aggregated in compound umbels. Fruits are fleshy berries.

Collection of lancewoods P. crassifolius showing the variation in leaf form, copyright Petra Gloyn. Two individuals on the left are young tress with hanging leaves; to the right is a more mature individual with spreading leaves.

Within Pseudopanax, the lancewoods are particularly renowned for their exhibition of heteroblasty, a phenomenon where the appearance of the leaves changes significantly as the tree matures. Juvenile leaves of the common lancewood P. crassifolius and toothed lancewood P. ferox are remarkably long, slender, strongly toothed along the margin, stiff and leathery, and hang downwards around the young tree like a skirt. As the tree approaches its mature height, it starts producing shorter, softer, less serrate leaves that are held in a more or less horizontal position.

Changes in growth habit with maturity seem to be surprisingly common among New Zealand plants and there has been a lot of discussion about why this might be. One suggestion that has certainly received a lot of public attention is that it is a relic of browsing by the large herbivorous birds such as moa that dominated the New Zealand environment prior to human settlement. Juvenile plants developed a habit that was energetically expensive but discouraged browsing by birds; as they grew high enough to escape the reach of such browsers, they changed to a less demanding form. I personally tend to be skeptical of these kinds of claims of historical baggage, not least because the extinction of one-half of the equation makes them very hard to test in any way, but I will admit that this case does perhaps have a bit more credibility than, for instance, claims elsewhere of giant fruits being dependent on long-extinct megafauna. Alternatively, it has been suggested that changes in growth habit may be related to climatic conditions; the juvenile leaves of P. crassifolius dissipate heat more effectively than those of mature trees (Gould 1993). Heteroblasty is less pronounced in the montane lancewood P. linearis of the South Island and almost absent in the Chatham Islands lancewood P. chathamicus, an insular derivative of P. crassifolius. Were these species insulated from the selective pressures affecting the other two? It should also be pointed out that the two proposals mentioned here are not mutually exclusive; the consideration of one as a factor does not automatically rule out the other.

REFERENCES

Gould, K. S. 1993. Leaf heteroblasty in Pseudopanax crassifolius: functional significance of leaf morphology and anatomy. Annals of Botany 71: 61–70.

Mitchell, A. D., D. G. Frodin & M. J. Heads. 1997. Reinstatement of Raukaua, a genus of the Araliaceae centred in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Botany 35 (3): 309–315.

Perrie, L. R., & L. D. Shepherd. 2009. Reconstructing the species phylogeny of Pseudopanax (Araliaceae), a genus of hybridising trees. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 52: 774–783.