Monthly Archives: September 2016

Endophytic microbiome in crowberry? What?

I have to admit. I had to look up what endophytic micro biome was, but it is truly fascinating. They are microbes that live inside plant tissues, in this case, the crowberry, Empetrum nigrum. The authors identified one of these microbes inside the crowberry that has antibacterial activity, specifically a Staphylococcus bacterium. They propose that the presence of this endophyte might have value in the pharmaceutical industry to fight bacterial diseases. So the crowberry itself is not antibacterial. It’s a litter microbe inside the tissues! empetrum

Fertilizing the Tundra

This article verifies what a lot of wild stand managers have known. Adding fertilizer to wild habitats, as long as 30 years, increases grasses and deciduous shrubs and decreases the number of species. In only one habitat type – moist acidic tussock tundra – did the cloudberry, Rubus chamaemorus, increase over the years and only as an understory plant beneath dwarf birch, Betula nana. The article does not address berry yield, but I suspect, it decreased. Reductions in light levels and crowding beneath the shrubs probably made it harder for pollinators to work even if the plants produced flowers. oecologia