How To Get Blood Out Of A Stone

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

[1] Nutra: Goat milk prevents iron deficiency study

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)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)

Bumbling Through the Bog

Vervain, Verbena officiaonalis

On our way down to the beach last week I noticed an interesting small patch of ground to the left of the steps, about half way down, which looks ripe for a little investigation. I thought we’d spend an hour or so probing about there before lunch and then go snorkelling. It’s pretty boggy here so I expect there is a spring bubbling up from the cliff face nearby. Not a lot in flower at the moment but this one has a name you’ll probably recognise, Vervain or possibly Verbena from its scientific name Verbena officiaonalis. It’s been used in medicine since time immemorial as a sort of cure-all, even being used to staunch Christ’s wounds when he was pulled down from the cross. Even though we know that it contains compounds likely to have pharmaceutical properties there seem to have been no human studies regarding its actual efficacy which I find somewhat surprising.

How to identify Sedges, Rushes and Grasses

You’ll have to watch your step here, it really is rather wet. The trick is to use the clumps of reeds as stepping stones. I’ve flipped a few rocks but disappointingly no reptiles or amphibians have emerged as yet. Reed incidentally is rather a fuzzy term for tall, grassy plants found in wetlands and they all look superficially similar. To work out whether the plant you are looking at is actually a rush (Junaceae family), a sedge (Cyperaceae) or a grass (Poaceae) there is a rhyme about the stems of these plants that may well bring back memories of student days for the older botanists among you: Sedges have edges, Rushes are round, Grasses are hollow and have nodes to the ground. Simple but effective: now we can all sound like professional wetland botanists.

Leaf-cutter Bee, Megachile sp.

I do believe that there’s a blackberry bush in flower over there, let’s take a closer look. The petals are almost exactly the same hue as the vervain. Have you noticed that certain flower colours predominate at certain times of the year? I see that it’s being visited by a Leaf-cutter bee, so called because they neatly snip off a portion of plant leaf and use it to line their nests. They make a burrow in the ground or find a suitable cavity, line the bottom with leaf snippets, lay a single egg, provision it with pollen (which they carry in sacs under their abdomens rather than on their hind legs like most bees), put a cap on it and then repeat the process until they have a nursery of little cells throughout the burrow. The larvae hatch, eat the food, moult a few times, pupate and then emerge as adults.

Hooded Crow, Corvus cornix

Talking of eating food I think that it’s time to revert to the terrace for lunch and a bit more bird watching. Last week we were looking at the flocking behaviour of feral pigeons but today I thought we’d take a closer look at the Hooded Crows. Like all of the corvid family they are highly intelligent birds and it seems to me that they get bored easily and, if they have nothing better to do, they play. A couple of days ago I saw one trying to fly in formation with the pigeons like Concorde among the Red Arrows (the pigeons didn’t take a blind bit of notice). Today I see that they’re playing aerobatics: launching themselves from the telegraph wire, catching the updraft from the cliffs, allowing themselves to be blown gently backwards and attempting to land on the telegraph pole whilst in reverse as it were. Whether they are actually playing depends upon your definition of play of course but flight play, such as this, is one of seven documented play types observed in crows. ^[1] An excellent lunch as usual so I suggest a short rest for digestion purposes and then we’ll continue our undersea explorations.

Ornate Wrasse, Thalassoma pavo

Now this is a common colourful fish that you’ll see a lot of as we snorkel about. These are Ornate Wrasse and you may be forgiven for thinking that they are two different fish as the male is much bigger and has one blue band and the smaller female has five blue bands and a black saddle. Not only are they beautiful, inquisitive and friendly (start flipping rocks underwater and they’ll be your friend for life, following you around to see what tit-bits you disturb) but, like many fish, they develop in a curious way. When the eggs hatch after spawning they are all female, not a male to be seen. Like their mothers before them they grow to maturity, produce eggs and spawn and then, having fulfilled their female function they change sex and become males ready to fertilise the spawn of other females. So they get to see both sides of life as it were. Let’s all split up and see what else we can find. There are some sea caves along the cliff line that usually throw up something interesting.

Happy hunting.

See all the pictures including insets in detail on Flickr

[1] Corvid Research- Do crows play and why?

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