Ok folks, our mission for today is to clamber down
through these rocks and explore that gully down there. To make things more
interesting our route is lined with plenty of spiky plants so our chances of
getting to the bottom without being bloodied and bruised are remote to say the
least. This lethal looking bush here for instance, which I can’t quite place,
looks capable of causing serious injury. I see that it’s producing tiny red
fruits and as we have our botanist friend Steve Lenton with us today
(although he’s opted to take a more sedate route) we’ll collect a couple and
pass them on to him for identification. After all, there’s no point in having a
dog and barking yourself. Talking of which, you wouldn’t just like to put your
hand in and grab a couple of berries would you? Thought not. Here goes then.
Ouch, first blood to the flora.
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| Red rocks contain iron |
That’s the difficult part over, all limbs etc.
intact? Good. My arm really is bleeding quite profusely now and my hand will
soon be as red as that rock down there. I’d ask you to keep an eye out for some
woundwort but it only grows down by the coast. The fact that both my blood and
this rock are red is no coincidence. The linking factor is iron. Blood contains
haemoglobin which uses iron to bind with oxygen in order to carry it from the
lungs to where it is needed. Similarly, that rock down there is composed
primarily of iron oxides and the chemical bonds between iron and oxygen reflect
red light. This is also why arterial blood which carries blood from the lungs
and has more iron/oxygen bonds is redder than venous blood which carries blood
back to the lungs for oxygen replenishment and thus has fewer bonds.
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| Plants take up iron from the soil |
Now I don’t know about you but I don’t go around
eating rocks for a pastime so the question is: how does the iron get from the
rock to our blood? The answer of course lies in what we eat. Plants like
spinach, as we all know from Popeye, are full of iron but in fact all green
plants take up iron from the earth in order to photosynthesise. Which begs the
question; if it’s all to do with iron why are plants green and not red? The
answer is that although the main element in chlorophyll is magnesium, iron is
used in its synthesis. Without iron the plant cannot make chlorophyll and the
leaves become yellowish in a condition known as iron chlorosis. So all the plants that we see around us here,
from the cropped grasses to the trees, are busy taking up iron.
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| Herbivores take in iron from plants |
The story doesn’t end there of course. All of the
herbivorous animals that we eat, from this garden snail down here to that goat
up there, (“Who me?” “Yes, you”) are busily devouring plant material and
passing the iron along through the system.
Which is good news for us because with insufficient iron in our diet we
can’t produce enough haemoglobin and we become anaemic. (The word itself means
lack of haem, the iron molecule in haemoglobin). The iron also gets passed along to us in the
milk (the goat’s not the snail’s) and although the mineral content of goat’s
milk and cow’s milk is fairly similar the body processes iron and the other
minerals more efficiently from goat’s milk so it’s a useful addition to your
diet.[1]
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| Termites help take iron back to the soil |
That just about wraps up our story of how to get
blood out of a stone but having got it out, how do we put it back again?
Everything that lives must die, whether it be a blood cell, a tree or one of
these here termites that are aiding the process of decay. As we go through
life, the trees, the termites and us, we excrete waste products and return iron
to the soil along the way and then, at the end of our lives, back it all goes to be taken up
again or, over geological time, to be compacted, subducted, churned about in
the mantle, eventually to re-emerge on the surface as a red rock.
What goes around, comes around as they say. Talking
of which, here’s Steve.
“Any idea on these berries which I’ve taken from
one of these horrendously thorny bushes, at great risk to life and limb, not to
mention septicaemia, for your collection?”
“I’ll have to examine the whole bush and leaves to
determine the species but I'm fairly certain it’s a Rhamnus.”
Ah, that would be a Buckthorn in plain English. Not
content with trying to stab me to death it’s probably injected toxic berry
juice into my fingers. The things I do for botanical research. Oh well, if I’m
not dead by next week we’ll continue on down and see if we can reach the
village of Agios Ioannes.
The Extra Bit
And now I think we’ve earned one of those beers
that I spotted in the back box of Steve’s quad bike. A lovely warm November
morning for a quiet drink on a mountainside in good company and you really
can’t beat the scenery.
Meanwhile back at home the Hooded Crows have just
started to congregate for their November conference. (see also Bramiana In Winter)
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LINKS:
Naturalists
(the facebook page that accompanies this blog)
See detailed pictures at
http://www.inaturalist.org/login (search - people-stevedaniels-observations)
sea buckthorn is edible, strangely, although barely
ReplyDeleteLovely comment Simon as it brings up a couple of interesting points. Firstly the danger of common names. Although Buckthorn and Sea Buckthorn are quite similar in appearance they are from different plant families (Rhamnaceae and Elaeagnaceae respectively) and while Buckthorn used to be used as a purgative in the past its toxicity made it highly dangerous and it is no longer used. Sea Buckthorn berries, as you say are edible (if rather sour) which brings up the second point. I've done a fair bit of foraging in my time and, interesting thought the results have been, I've gained a fair appreciation of why we've spent the past 10,000 years or so cross breeding wild plants to create the varieties we now buy in the shops or plant in our gardens. Give me a plate of garden grown spinach over a plate of wild amaranths (both in the amaranthaceae family) any day.
ReplyDelete