The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7345 p460
16 April 2005

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Wild flowers under threat more
Using one pollutant to remove another more
More trouble from Indonesia as archaeologists argue over Homo floriensis more
Ex Oriente lux more

Wild flowers under threat

I was recently alarmed by a report published by the charity Plantlife International that changes in the environment are posing a threat to wild flowers in the West Country. On the evidence of some 3,000 reports sent in by experts and volunteers many plant species familiar to us for years are proving vulnerable and showing a reduction in numbers.

The situation of the observer is made more difficult because climatic variations have altered the flowering times of some familiar plants. Other factors seem to be pollution from traffic, fertilisers and sewage, which has encouraged the excessive growth of nitrogen-loving species. Soils in the UK have become dangerously enriched, and this has discouraged the diversity of plant species.

Arable field margins have over the past 25 years shown the greatest decline in wild flowers, but cliff tops and woodland have also suffered. The primrose, harebell, thrift and rowan have become scarcer in some places, with more domination by hawthorn, cleavers and sterile brome in hedges, stinging nettles along streams, matgrass and bracken on moorland and heaths.

One exception I have noticed this year, and that is the lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), which seems to have gone crazy in my area. The lesser celandine is the first of the buttercup family to make its appearance, usually in late February. It was called celandine because of a supposed relationship with the swallow “chelidonum”, which however makes its appearance several weeks later in the spring.

The blossoms have the interesting habit of opening and shutting during the day according to the amount of sunlight reaching the leaves. It was Wordsworth’s favourite flower, and he wrote three poems about it.

The vernacular name “pilewort” was applied to the plant, the name being thought to derive from the strange knobs on its tubers. However, it was used in folk medicine as a cure for piles, being consumed with wine or beer, in accordance with the doctrine of signatures. It is best left alone, but Linnaeus said that the leaves were eaten in salads in Sweden.

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Using one pollutant to remove another

One of the serious problems of modern industrial development is that of dealing with by-products in such a way as to avoid doing harm to the environment and endangering plant and animal life.

According to an environmental comment in Chemistry World for April, one interesting situation has been devised in which two pollutants may be managed in such a way that each neutralises the hazard of the other. Iron ochre, which is discharged from abandoned mines, can be used to strip phosphate from sewage and agricultural run-off and convert it into a useful fertiliser.

When mines are abandoned, the iron sulphide present in their walls oxidises in the air to sulphate and dissolves in water trickling from the excavation. When this water runs out of the redundant mine the sulphate present is oxidised to produce ferric oxide, which is deposited downstream as a rusty ochre layer. Since this is toxic it must be precipitated to protect against pollution of watercourses into which it would otherwise penetrate.

It has been noted that in tropical areas of the world laterites, which are loaded with ferric oxide, adsorb phosphates in the soil. For the local farmers this means that their phosphate fertilisers are prevented from being taken up by crops.

Ochre derived from mines is capable of stripping phosphates from sewage and other water draining from agricultural land and enables the material to be redistributed over the farming area in a form which grasses and cereal crops are able to absorb.

Experiments have shown that a phosphate-saturated iron ochre can be spread over growing crops, the phosphate being liberated slowly, so that fewer applications are necessary when a conventional phosphate manure is applied. Moreover, the water draining from land treated in this way offers less hazard as a potential pollutant of watercourses lower down.

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More trouble from Indonesia as archaeologists argue over Homo floriensis

There seems to be no end to the battle between archaeologists and anthropologists over the remains of Homo floriensis that was unearthed in Indonesia recently. His bones, reckoned to be 18,000 years old, were discovered on the island of Flores by a team from an Australian university led by Michael Morwood, but transferred to the laboratory of the Indonesian palaeoanthropologist, Teuku Jacob, who wished to examine them in advance of other experts. There were rather unpleasant repercussions of this act, and disturbing facts have been revealed in a news item published in Science for 25 March.

It is claimed by Morwood that, after examination of the returned bones when Jacob had been persuaded to relinquish them, the Australian experts discovered serious damage, produced either in transit between site and laboratory or during laboratory examination. The left side of the pelvis, one of the main distinguishing features, had been crushed, and the taking of casts of delicate bones from the base of the skull and jawbone had also resulted in damage which had been suffered from attempts to glue displaced portions back into position.

It is admitted that moulds and casts had been made of parts of the skeleton, but denied that this could have caused the damage in the laboratory.

Other experts have emphasised that it was highly undesirable that the bones should ever have been moved from Jakarta and transported to several different locations before a thorough examination and recording process had been carried out. There is a worrying reflection that if the apparent rivalry between different experts had not been allowed to disturb the situation, lamentable damage to probably irreplaceable specimens would have been avoided.

The episode offers a serious warning to all who engage in studying the tricky subject of palaeoarchaeology.

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And I quote…

Ex Oriente lux
“The West having managed to lodge its hasty foot on the neck of the East, is prone to forget that it is from the East that the wonders of patience and wisdom have come into a world of men who set the value of life in the power to act rather than in the faculty of meditation.”
— Joseph Conrad:‘Autocracy and war’ (1905).
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