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Our world's future will always be in the hands of the youth. We must always be looking for better solutions for what we are doing now, in any aspect. I think horticulture education will play a pivotal role in the future of food growth. "if we don’t teach young people about plants, they won’t grow up to have an appreciation for our natural world". Horticulturists are critical to feeding the world with food that is safe and nutritiousWhen I was in middle school I joined the science club, we did fun experiments, but we never learned about plants/planting. I think students should be taught how to apply their knowledge of pants outside the class room. Practicing good gardening technique is important so that plants thrive and the soil is not depleted of nutrients.

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What is horticulture? It's a word middle-schoolers tell us is "weird." Where does your food come from? The vast majority of those same students-and in fact, their families-can't tell us. Can you name ten plants that grow near you? Only a minuscule number of people in America can do so. Well before the term "plant blindness" was coined in 1998 by botanists James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler, the majority of people in the U.S. had lost their collective ability to notice the plants around them. We are oblivious to what was common knowledge to our ancestors: where our food comes from, the importance of plants to the health of humans and animals, and the role of plants in the very survival of our planet. Some might ask, why is this a big deal?

Consider for a moment what will happen if we do nothing. Study after study shows that getting children and families to notice the plants around them, let alone appreciate the natural world, and consider jobs and careers with plants, is daunting. Increased time engaging only with technology, misconceptions about the quality of life afforded by working in horticulture, and lack of awareness of what horticulture and horticulture expertise means to the future of our planet are all steep hills for us to climb. However, if we don't teach young people about plants, they won't grow up to have an appreciation for our natural world. Horticulturists are critical to feeding the world with food that is safe and nutritious. We also need horticulturists to preserve native habitats, to imagine urban landscapes and bring them to life; we need them to tend to landscapes that welcome us home and invite us outdoors to play. And for our mental health, we need horticulture to soothe and delight us with flowers and foliage, to provide us a place for wonder and experiment, and to ensure the future of our planet.

This urgency is very real. According to Purdue University, only sixty-one percent of the expected 57,900 average annual job openings available in the horticulture industry in the U.S. are likely to be filled. Why, when horticulture jobs are plentiful (and an estimated 41% of graduating college seniors cannot find jobs in their chosen field) aren't people flocking to pursue careers working with plants?

In 2013, at a meeting of the American Society for Horticultural Science, horticulture professionals asked one another these same questions. They recognized that shrinking college and university horticulture programs, decline in qualified applicants for open positions across the industry, and general public apathy about plants were all contributing to a workforce shortage that left unchecked, would soon lead to a crisis. At that meeting, the Seed Your Future movement was created to tackle this issue. Founded by Longwood Gardens and the American Society for Horticultural Science, the movement has quickly grown to more than 70,000 advocates and 200 partners including horticulture companies, colleges and universities, gardening organizations, and other affiliated non-profits.

Launched with a desire for solid information, Seed Your Future conducted three phases of research to help discover why the perception of horticulture is poor and why young people are not pursuing careers in the industry. The first phase of research studied the industry and confirmed that scarcity of qualified applicants for open positions is indeed a critical issue.

We then studied Americans' perceptions of horticulture and careers working with plants. While plant blindness is rampant, the good news is that there are many plant-focused movements that are expanding. Farm-to-table, field-to-vase, school and community gardens, and increased interest in home gardening are all contributing to a renewal of plant appreciation. What is evident, however, is that most Americans have a narrow view of the careers available in horticulture. In fact, our research found a prevalent stereotype that the only jobs in horticulture were in "lawn maintenance." There was little understanding of the growing, breeding, distribution, science, technology, education, art, design, and business careers just waiting for qualified applicants.

FOCUSING ON YOUTH

Knowing that middle school is a key time when students begin to think about future careers, Seed Your Future conducted focus groups with middle-schoolers, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors, and the results were encouraging. Few understood the jobs available, but once participants learned about the diverse opportunities in horticulture, they were very interested. Significantly, not one middle-schooler had ever heard the term "horticulture." (Here's where they told us "horticulture" was weird, but words they invented such as "plantology" were cool.) They told us that we need to use simple language they can understand and inspiring, relatable imagery.

And there were other promising findings. Youth told us they want jobs where they can "make an impact on the world," "be creative," and "save the environment." What better to fuel their interests than jobs in horticulture? So, while there are plant-focused movements making impact, what we haven't done is connect those movements to career paths. We've not told the stories well; we've not inspired the next generation and their families.

Armed with these imperatives, Seed Your Future has been working to build awareness of the power of plants and the rewards of a career in horticulture. Along with our partner Scholastic, in 2018 we launched BLOOM!, an educational campaign to reach middle-schoolers, their parents, their teachers, and their youth program leaders, to introduce them to the critical role plants play in our lives With a fun, interactive online learning module, sample lesson plans and activities, and dozens of youth-friendly videos, the movement has already reached 4.6 million students in the first three years. It's free and available to anyone with an interest in opening kids' eyes to the wonder of plants on our website ( Scholastic.com/BLOOM). We also have a companion youth-focused site ( wearebloom.org) where you can take a quiz and find out your own plant personality!

It will take time for those middle-schoolers to grow up to become horticulture professionals-and we need people now. So, Seed Your Future has also developed a robust suite of new resources. These include:

Fun and educational DIY plant-experiment videos that can be done at home, at school, in youth programs, and more. Examples include building a plant maze to explore phototropism and growing new plants from kitchen scraps. Check them out on our Seed your Future website (please see web links at the end of this article).

An online Horticulture Career Exploration tool featuring 140-plus horticulture and floriculture careers, the training required, where to study, expected salaries, and videos of real people in each job. This has fast become the most popular offering on our SeedYourFuture.org website.

More online resources for students, including a listing of all two- and four-year plant studies programs in the U.S. and Canada, scholarships in horticulture, horticulture internships across the country, and even links to horticulture camps (org/students).

Our Horticultural Heroes and Plant Champions feature profiles real people in horticulture and their unique and inspiring paths to finding their own plant power. They are telling the world on social media #ILoveMyPlantJob.

USING THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO BUILD PLANT POWER

By nature, plant people aren't technology people. Wait? What? Is that really true? Actually, no. While plant people love to dig in the soil and appreciate the human-plant connection, overall the majority do in fact appreciate the power of social media to educate and inspire. It's just that social media content is often overwhelmingly negative. Seed Your Future is determined to change that. And the defining moment is now.

The world has changed in 2020. A global pandemic has altered every facet of life for humans, including how we live, work, eat, play, and socialize. Fear of going outside, fear of connecting with others, and fear of an unknown plague have forced us not only to isolate from one another but from the natural world. Even though decades of solid research affirm the ability of plants and nature to heal, cure, soothe, and inspire, access to outdoor spaces has been restricted. Even enjoying one's own backyard or balcony is seen by some as a risk too perilous to take. As media coverage exploded about the spread of the pandemic, the Seed Your Future movement searched for the voice we would use to help provide respite from a growing panic. While certainly, the pandemic was and still is, a dangerous issue, we choose to spread messages about the power of plants to support our mental and physical health-especially in times of crisis. Our #NatureNeverCloses and #PlantPower campaigns provide inspiration about plants and nature.

NURTURING THE "GREEN LINING"

We've also been trying to change the vernacular. It's about physical distancing, not social isolation. Being around plants, growing plants, and even just looking at flowers and plants has been proven to improve our mood, provide hope, and nourish us both physically and emotionally.

While we can never say that there is a "silver lining" to the pandemic, there are more people interested in growing their own food and flowers, purchasing houseplants, seeds, and garden supplies; they want to spend their time improving the environment around them with plants-a "green lining," as it were.

But people can be fickle, attention spans short, and if we don't capitalize on this moment in time, time will pass and interest in gardening and plants may wane again. So, what can we do about it?

Please join us in this movement. Help tell the stories of how plants are important to the planet, to the beauty of our world, to nourishing our bodies and souls. To inspire young people to even think about learning more about horticulture and plant careers, we must talk about it in ways that resonate with them and their families. Together, we can ensure that the next generation emerges from this pandemic with a life-long interest in plants, gardens, and gardening. We want them to be our #FutureGreenCollar workers.

Let's not miss this opportunity to share the "green lining" and teach people how plants can indeed cure, heal, soothe, and inspire!

____________________________________
Susan E. Yoder, IOM is the Executive Director of Seed Your Future. You can reach her at syoder@SeedYourFuture.org Learn more about the movement at www.SeedYourFuture.org..

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Pacific Horticulture | Horticulture is Critical to Our Future

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What is horticulture? It's a word middle-schoolers tell us is "weird." Where does your food come from? The vast majority of those same students-and in fact, their families-can't tell us. Can you name ten plants that grow near you? Only a minuscule number of people in America can do so.

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Plants have provided humans with medicines and natural remedies for thousands of years. Which means that the common cold has many remedies, one of which contains echinacea. Echinaceas are pretty flowers with pink petals, and they are a part of the Asteraceae family. A common family member of echinacea is ragweed, which I am extremely allergic to. I learned just how important it is to do research before taking any supplements, when I had an allergic reaction to holistic cold supplements. "...allergic reactions to Echinacea occur as a result of underlying allergy to ragweed" https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/M01-RR000059-46-6770 . As plant medicine and supplement research progresses, more opportunities for promoting a healthy lifestyle are possible.

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed isfor the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator.Echinacea is one of the most commonly used dietary supplements in the United States. Significant allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, have been documented in users of Echinacea and, in most cases, reactions have occurred upon first known use of Echinacea. It is hypothesized that allergic reactions to Echinacea occur as a result of underlying allergy to ragweed, as both plants are members of the Asteraceae botanical family, and thus have the potential to possess immunological and clinical cross-reactivity. The long-term objective of this proposal is to understand the risk for allergic reactions to Echinacea in individuals with ragweed allergy. This pilot study will evaluate the skin test reactivity to a newly prepared Echinacea extract of known origin in subjects with and without a history of ragweed allergy and determine the optimal concentration of the extract for use in prick and intradermal skin testing. In order to test the hypothesis that ragweed allergic subjects are more likely to display IgE reactivity on allergy skin testing to Echinacea than non-ragweed allergic subjects, 20 adults with and without a history of ragweed allergy will be recruited.

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Allergenic Cross-Reactivity Between Echinacea and Ragweed

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries.

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Plant domestication has affected many aspects of human life. It has provided access to nutrients, medications, food, and research. With an increase of farming, an increase of jobs is also a result of plant domestication in society. There has also been an increase in the standard of living in underdeveloped countries, after certain agricultural techniques were spread. Plant domestication has been mostly used to create crops that; are resistant to pests, extreme weather, and produce a higher yield. "...control the reproduction and dispersal of another species (the domesticated) in order to meet the needs of the former, most notably (but not exclusively) for food." Future generations depend on the advancements in plant domestication as a source of food as climate change threatens the future of agriculture.

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Domestication is a co-evolutionary process that occurs when wild plants are brought into cultivation by humans, leading to origin of new species and/or differentiated populations that are critical for human survival. Darwin used domesticated species as early models for evolution, highlighting their variation and the key role of selection in species differentiation. Over the last two decades, a growing synthesis of plant genetics, genomics, and archaeobotany has led to challenges to old orthodoxies and the advent of fresh perspectives on how crop domestication and diversification proceed. I discuss four new insights into plant domestication - that in general domestication is a protracted process, that unconscious (natural) selection plays a prominent role, that interspecific hybridization may be an important mechanism for crop species diversification and range expansion, and that similar genes across multiple species underlies parallel/convergent phenotypic evolution between domesticated taxa. Insights into the evolutionary origin and diversification of crop species can help us in developing new varieties (and possibly even new species) to deal with current and future environmental challenges in a sustainable manner.

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Evolutionary Insights into the Nature of Plant Domestication

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Domestication is a co-evolutionary process that occurs when wild plants are brought into cultivation by humans, leading to origin of new species and/or differentiated populations that are critical for human survival. Darwin used domesticated species as early models for evolution, highlighting their variation and the key role of selection in species differentiation.

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Domestication of plants has opened an opportunity for genetic problem-solving. The article mentions the "domestication syndrome" and how that makes the plants dependent on humans. To prevent the reliance of human intervention with plants, scientists have begun to genetically edit plants. In a way they are aiming to reverse domestication of plants, through their genes. Gene editing can decrease the time needed to create the most desirable crop. It is important to understand the domestication of plants and the harms that it creates to the food we eat. Through gene editing, the plants, fruits, and vegetables, we eat can be perfected without endangering the stability of plant generations to come.

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New Food Crop Domestication in the Age of Gene Editing: Genetic, Agronomic and Cultural Change Remain Co-evolutionarily Entangled

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The classic domestication scenario for grains and fruits has been portrayed as the lucky fixation of major-effect “domestication genes.” Characterization of these genes plus recent improvements in generating novel alleles (e.g., by gene editing) have created great interest in de novo domestication o…

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Plants have been evolving and adapting for millions of years. One of the key factors for plant evolution is, evolving around animals and insects. When a plant's ability to efficiently grow is effected by insects or animals it causes the plant to evolve. https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-thorny-truth-about-spine-evolution-20170614/ , this article explains why the Carolina horsenettle evolved to grow larger and more thorns. According to the article when caterpillars fed on the plants leaves, the new growth of the plant had bigger thorns and many more of them. The plant did this to deter the caterpillars from wanting to eat the leaves. When the caterpillars struggled to reach the leaves to eat them, less of the plant was destroyed and growth increased. It is important to pay attention to plant's adaptations, so that we can observe the desirable traits of plants for the future.

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Why do roses have thorns? The answer seems self-evident: Thorns, spines and prickles are plants' defensive weaponry, making their most precious parts unpalatable - even untouchable - to big plant-eaters, like deer and other mammals. For decades, this has been the working assumption of scientists who study ecological interactions between plants and animals. The overwhelming bulk of the scientific literature on the ecological and evolutionary purpose of thorniness (or, to use biologists' preferred terminology, spinescence) has focused on the hypothesis that mammalian herbivores are the main target.

That may have been a mistake. Over the years, studies of how well sharp deterrents discourage hungry mammals have returned mixed results. Moreover, some paleontological work offers evidence that spines evolved before the first plant-eating terrestrial animals did. Now, a report in Biology Letters suggests that, at least for some plant species, spines play an important role in defending against insects - a hypothesis that has long been ignored if not dismissed entirely. The counterintuitive results show the pitfalls of trusting human experience and intuition too much when trying to understand the evolutionary dynamics of other species in a prehistoric world.

Rupesh Kariyat, an ecologist studying plant-insect interactions in the biocommunication group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), didn't set out to upend the conventional wisdom about plant spines. As a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University, he was working with Mark Mescher (also now at ETH Zurich) on the genetic consequences of inbreeding and herbivory on Carolina horsenettle plants ( Solanum carolinense) when the pair noticed something strange. After tobacco hornworm caterpillars ( Manduca sexta) fed on the plants, new shoots sported more spines. "That made us think that these spines could also have [an] additional function than what we have been taught," Kariyat said.

Researchers had documented other plant species that grew extra thorns in response to predation by mammals. But seeing caterpillars have the same effect raised a flag for Kariyat and Mescher. From an ecological perspective, it's wasteful for a plant to expend energy growing a structure like a thorn unless it thwarts the attacker at hand. Surely the tiny caterpillars could simply climb around or over the horsenettle's spines.

Image courtesy of Rupesh R. Kariyat

To test whether that was so, Mescher explained, the team designed a set of experiments that could explore the question three ways. First, using the same inbred S. carolinense variety - which has fewer spines than genetically normal plants do - they examined the effects of spine density on caterpillar movement. After removing all of a plant's leaves save the freshest, tastiest one at the top, they placed caterpillars on the soil next to the plants' stems and clocked how long it took the bugs to reach the tasty morsel above, comparing inbred plants to normal ones. Then they went a step further by manipulating the spine density, slicing away spines with a razor blade so that all the plants had the same number, and repeated the experiment. Lastly, they expanded the research to include two other species in the same genus: S. aethiopicum, the Ethiopian nightshade, and S. atropurpureum, the purple devil. The three species vary in spine density: Ethiopian nightshade has the fewest, while the purple devil has the most. Again they compared plants with their spines intact and removed, but this time they measured how long it took caterpillars to remove all of a plant's leaves rather than speed to the leaves at the top. If caterpillars fell off the plants during the process, the researchers put them back on an unfinished leaf and allowed them to continue feeding.

Kariyat, Mescher and their colleagues found the same pattern across all three trials: Spines were always an impediment to the hungry larvae. With the prickles cut, caterpillars more quickly reached the leaves they desired. For intact plants, the species with the most spines - the purple devil - proved most difficult for the caterpillars to defoliate. Moreover, the spines not only slowed the caterpillars but also interfered with their footing and forced them into more acrobatic maneuvers. As a result, the caterpillars frequently fell off while traveling between leafy shoots. Sometimes they even impaled themselves on the larger spines. According to Kariyat, these kinds of movement restrictions "have a huge effect on their fitness in the long term" - and thus, the authors concluded that the spines of Solanum plants are effective caterpillar deterrents.

Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

Nevertheless, the team does not insist that their results prove insects were the primary reason that plants developed spines, prickles and thorns. To the contrary, Kariyat said, "We think that spines evolved against mammalian herbivores." But they suspect that at some point in history, the horsenettles and other plants found an even more effective weapon - toxic alkaloids in their tissues - and mammals stopped eating them regularly. The caterpillars, which were largely unaffected by the alkaloids, became specialists at preying on the plants. Evolution may then have co-opted the plants' spines for a new defensive purpose, a phenomenon known as exaptation. "So over time, these spines have started to have an additional benefit, helping the plant win the arms race" against the insects, he said.

The unexpected results were a bit hard for others in the field to swallow. "When I first read this paper, my overwhelming response was: 'Oh, that's just [nonsense] - there are so many problems!'" said Angela Moles, a research professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who studies the ecological strategies of plants. "Then the more I read it, the more I was, like, 'Actually, it's right.'" Her sentiments were echoed by Mick Hanley, an associate professor at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, who was lead author on a 2007 review paper about plants' structural defenses. "I looked at it at first and I thought, hmm. Then I read it again, and I saw that it all sort of hangs together," he said.

Others are less convinced. "I'm not sure that we can conclude from their results that spinescence is an adaptation against insect herbivory," said Tristan Charles-Dominique, a plant-evolution specialist at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China. He and William Bond, emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, used phylogenetic methods to show in 2016 that the diversity of spiny plants in Africa coincided with an uptick in bovid mammals, such as wildebeests and gazelles. That finding supports the traditional view that spines defend against large mammals.

"I think they did a good job at showing that the feeding rate of caterpillars is indeed slowed down as their movement is disrupted," said Charles-Dominique, but "I think that there is quite a lot of information to be gathered before being able to test the potential coevolution between spiny plants and insects."

Kariyat does not disagree. "One of the things we want to see is whether this effect is just on the caterpillars," he said. He explained that they also want to better quantify how insects are affected by impaired movement: "How much does it affect their growth and development and pupation, and how does that affect them long term?"

But Kariyat and Mescher's findings aren't the first to suggest a potential role for spinescence in deterring insects. Moles noted that the results are consistent with paleontological evidence that spines evolved before large herbivores. She pointed to a 1970 review paper by the late British paleobotanist William Gilbert Chaloner, in which he noted that a number of plants from more than 400 million years ago showed "small apparently non-vascularized appendages on the stem, distributed more or less randomly ... and variously termed spines, emergences, teeth or enations."

"So we've got a lot of species with these funny prickles that we don't know what they do," Moles explained, "and it's, I don't know, at least 10 or 20 million years before the first terrestrial vertebrate herbivores start appearing."

The results highlight a tricky issue in the study of evolution and adaptation: Because of exaptation, understanding the current function of a trait is very different from inferring the evolutionary pressures under which it initially evolved. "It's impossible to track why a defense that works now might have evolved millions of years ago," Hanley said. "Those spines could have evolved for a completely different reason that has nothing to do with herbivory."

Indeed, hypotheses about the original purpose of plant spines range far beyond the deterrence of herbivores of various sizes. It's been theorized that the spines might have boosted plants' surface area to enhance photosynthesis, or that they helped to direct water to the plants' roots. Or that they first helped plants to sprawl and climb. "Other than being able to replay the evolutionary tape over millions of years," Hanley said, "we've got no real way of knowing."

Despite the number of credible alternatives, however, research into explanations for spinescence other than deterrence of mammals has been scant. "If you look in the literature about spinescence in plants, there are about 150 to 200 papers about mammalian herbivory," Kariyat said, "but you see only two or three, maybe four, on insects."

Perhaps that is because a highly influential and widely cited study examining the possible role of plant spines in insect herbivory was published in 1988; the authors found that removing the spines from holly leaves had no effect on caterpillar feeding. (An irony is that the same study also questioned the value of those spines in deterring mammalian herbivores, because in feeding trials the animals failed to show a preference for spineless leaves.) In the 29 years since that publication, the scientific literature seems to have applied those conclusions - that spines don't function as insect deterrents -to all forms of spinescence on all species of plants.

Kariyat is hopeful that his team's findings will spur more labs to investigate other ways that spines might be beneficial to plants. Although his own work focused on caterpillars, he noted that many other small herbivores, such as snails, could also be affected by spines and might have influenced their evolution. The field is ripe for discovery, he said, "because there are plenty of plants with spines!"

It's hard not to view the lack of scientific investigation into the effects of spinescence on invertebrates as an illustration of our own species' limitations and preconceptions. "When we go in the garden, we get cut by roses, so we perceive those thorns to be a defense against mammals," Hanley said. "In almost every manifestation of understanding biology, we're always putting our own human view on it."

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How Superfluid Dark Matter Mimics an Old Idea About Gravity

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The Thorny Truth About Spine Evolution | Quanta Magazine

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Why do roses have thorns? The answer seems self-evident: Thorns, spines and prickles are plants' defensive weaponry, making their most precious parts unpalatable - even untouchable - to big plant-eaters, like deer and other mammals. For decades, this has been the working assumption of scientists who study ecological interactions between plants and animals.

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Growing muscadines and a friendly fence lizard

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Growing any crop can be a difficult task. But by learning the processes of plant growth and the conditions that they need, it can be easier. About 2 years ago I planted muscadine seeds in a pot and watched them grow until it was ready to go outside. Before moving the plant I learned what it needed to thrive and produce a decent yield of grapes. It needed well draining soil, so I chose an area with low clay content. And the vines needed full-sun, so they were put in a non-shady area on the fence, parallel to the setting sun. Last June I noticed that the leaves were yellowing, so I treated the plant with a magnesium mixture to aid the chlorophyll and correct the growth. Lastly as most plants do, it needed a sufficient amount of water. Without the knowledge of good planting conditions I would not have been able to make muscadine jelly this year. This article provided the information I needed to successfully grow my muscadine vines.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/grapes/muscadine-grapevine-planting.htm

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Why I prune my aquatic pond plants (the ones in question are in fact under the water and not visible because the water cabbage has not been tended to)

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Having an understanding of my aquatic plant's structure is necessary to me. I need to know where to cut, if the plant is growing properly, and how to optimize its sun absorption for photosynthesis. The plants need to be pruned before they reach the surface of the water. If they are not cut back, their growth will be negatively impacted and the filtration of the water will be compromised. Having oxygenating plants in a pond is imperative to the fish's health. The aquatic plants decrease the nitrates in the water and increase the oxygen quality in the pond. The following website provided information for aquatic plants that I did not previously know.
"Most aquatic plants do not need cuticles or have thin cuticles as cuticles prevent loss of water.
Aquatic plants keep their stomata always open for they do not need to retain water.

On each side of their leaves are a number of stomata.

Aquatic plants have less rigid structure since water pressure supports them

Roots are specialized to take in oxygen."

https://www.proflowers.com/blog/aquatic-plants-and-flowershttps://www.proflowers.com/blog/aquatic-plants-and-flowers