Tag: tomato

A class of 150 US 7th graders has helped select a name for a newly discovered plant, which amazes with its fruits that appear to be bleeding once they are cut open. Bucknell University biology professor Chris Martine and life science teacher Bradley Catherman challenged the students to come up with ideas for what to call the new Australian species last spring.

Looking for a way to engage local youngsters in biodiversity science, Martine scheduled a presentation to the collective 7th grade life science classes at Donald H. Eichhorn Middle School. As the day of his assembly approached, he started to think that the best way to generate interest might be to somehow allow the students to participate in the actual research he was doing in his lab at the time. Only, he knew there were few things he could do with 150 13- and 14-year olds sitting in a gymnasium.

“I emailed Mr. Catherman and I said, ‘How about we ask them to name a new species for me?’ explained Martine. “And then I showed up with live plants, preserved specimens, and my notes from the Outback – and we said, ‘Go ahead, tell us what to call this thing.'”

Nearly a year later, Martine and his co-authors, including two undergraduate students, have published the new species in the open access journal PhytoKeys. The news is coming just in time for the National Teacher Appreciation Day, thus giving tribute to Bradley Catherman, a life science teacher who is not afraid to step beyond the standard curriculum and make that extra step to actually engage his students with their studies.

“I was really impressed with Mr. Catherman’s willingness to work outside of the typical curriculum on this,” said Martine, “In an age when K-12 teachers are increasingly pressured to ‘teach to the test’ he is still willing to think creatively and try something unusual.”

Curiously, the new flowering bush species ‘behaves’ nothing like an ordinary plant. While its unripened fruits are greenish white on the inside when cut open, they start ‘bleeding’ in no more than two minutes. The scientists have even filmed a video short showing how their insides turn bloody scarlet at first, before growing darker, appearing just like clotting blood.

A week after the presentation, each of the students submitted an essay in which they suggested a name, explained the meaning, and translated it into Latin (the language that scientific names are required to be in). Catherman and Martine then selected the two best essays for the inaugural Discovery Prize, a new middle school science award established by Martine and his wife, Rachel.

“As you might imagine, the suggestions ran the gamut from the silly to the scientific,” said Martine. “But for every request to name the species after a favorite food, family pet, or Taylor Swift, there were many suggestions based on the data the students had been provided.”

According to Martine, a number of the students suggested names based on two characteristics of the plant’s berries: the ‘bleeding’ unripened fruits and the dry and bone-hard mature ones. Based on this, the plant will now be known as Solanum ossicruentum, best translated to Australian blood bone tomato, with “ossi” meaning “bone” and “cruentum” meaning “bloody”. The species belongs to the genus of the tomato.

The species is native to the sub-arid tropical zone of northern Australia. Martine collected the seeds, he grew his research plants from, during a 2014 expedition to Western Australia and the Northern Territory. However, specimens of the plant had actually been gathered for years before then.

“This is just one of thousands of unnamed Australian species that have been collected by dedicated field biologists and then stored in museums,” said Martine, who studied specimens of the new species in the Northern Territory Herbarium before hunting for it in the bush.

“There is a wealth of museum material just waiting to be given names – and, of course, the organisms represented by those specimens await that recognition, as well as the attention and protection that come with it.”

Luckily for Solanum ossicruentum, attention and protection are not too much of an issue.

“Not only is it widespread and fairly abundant,” said Martine, “but one of the healthiest populations occurs in Mirima National Park, a popular and easily-accessible natural area just outside the Western Australian town of Kununurra.”

“Plus, middle schoolers can be tough to deal with. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would mess with this plant, now,” the botanist joked.

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Original source:

Martine CT, Cantley JT, Frawley ES, Butler AR, Jordon-Thaden IE (2016) New functionally dioecious bush tomato from northwestern Australia, Solanum ossicruentum, may utilize “trample burr” dispersal. PhytoKeys 63: 19-29. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.63.7743

A new Australian bush tomato species, discovered by a team of researchers led by biology professor Chris Martine of Bucknell University, has been named after main character Mark Watney from the book and film The Martian. The authors, among whom is the undergraduate student Emma Frawley, have published the new species in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.

Martine announced the new name, Solanum watneyi, in The Huffington Post last year when he described it as a tribute to the heroic portrayal of Watney as a NASA botanist and engineer who saves himself with plant science expertise after being stranded on Mars.

In fact, Matt Damon’s botanist character impressed both the audience and the critics so much that it resulted in several Academy Awards nominations to the whole production team. The actor himself received a Golden Globe among many other prestigious recognitions including the BAFTA for Best Actor and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor.

“This is a botanist portrayal that turns an unusually bright spotlight on authentic scientific endeavor,” Martine explains the choice. “Scientist heroes are already unusual in Hollywood, but a space-deserted protagonist who studies plants as a profession is something extraordinary.“

However, according to Martine, the decision to name the species after Watney also has some taxonomic relevance.

“The plant that Watney manages to grow on Mars is none other than Solanum tuberosum (the potato), a member of the same genus as our new species,” he says.

This connection was not missed by Andy Weir, author of the book-turned-movie and father of the Watney character, who expressed his approval of the name on his Facebook page.

“What higher honor could a botanist like Watney ask for than to have a plant named after him?” writes Weir. “And to have it be a relative of the potato as well? Perfect!”

Martine collected specimens of the new species during a six-week expedition to the Northern Territory of Australia with his wife, Rachel, and their two children. Rachel drew the illustration of the species that appears in the PhytoKeys paper.

In order to make sure the new species is not in fact a previously known and closely related Solanum species, the family team collected hundreds of seeds of both species. Thus, the plants could be grown and compared side-by-side in a research greenhouse.

In the summer of 2015, Bucknell undergraduate student Emma Frawley, class 2017, studied the plants, ultimately gathering and analyzing enough morphometric data to confirm the distinctiveness of Solanum watneyi. This is how Frawley, a double major in environmental studies and Spanish, became a co-author of the present paper.

The new species occurs in and around the western part of Judbarra/Gregory National Park, where it was occasionally encountered by regional botanists who nicknamed the oddball plant “Bullita” after the cattle station that once operated in the area.

“The nickname started being applied in the 1970s,” said Martine, who studied historical collections of the plant at the Northern Territory Herbarium. “But no one had yet done statistical comparisons between that plant and its similar relative.”

Watney is not the only one being recognized by the botanical community following the release of The Martian. In recognition of his botanist star turn, the Botanical Society of America has extended an honorary membership to actor Matt Damon, who portrays the space botanist in the film.

Note: Also listed as authors on the recent publication are Bucknell University Burpee Postdoctoral Fellow Jason Cantley and University of California-Berkeley Research Botanist Ingrid Jordon-Thaden.

Original source:

Martine CT, Frawley ES, Cantley JT, Jordon-Thaden IE (2016) Solanum watneyi, a new bush tomato species from the Northern Territory, Australia named for Mark Watney of the book and film “The Martian”. PhytoKeys 61: 1–13. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.61.6995

Tag: tomato

Curious new bush species growing ‘bleeding’ fruits named by a US class of 150 7th graders

New bush tomato species is the link between botany and an Oscar-nominated Hollywood movie