Tom Kimmerer

Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) and paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh.) seedlings exposed to sulfur dioxide produced acetaldehyde and ethanol, and exhibited increased production of ethylene and ethane. Gas chromatographic measurement of head space gas from incubation tubes containing leaves or seedlings was a simple method of simultaneously measu...

Leaves of terrestrial plants are aerobic organs, and are not usually considered to possess the enzymes necessary for biosynthesis of ethanol, a product of anaerobic fermentation. We examined the ability of leaves of a number of plant species to produce acetaldehyde and ethanol anaerobically, by incubating detached leaves in N(2) and measuring heads...

Anaerobic fermentation in plants is usually thought to be a transient phenomenon, brought about by environmental limitations to oxygen availability, or by structural constraints to oxygen transport. The vascular cambium of trees is separated from the air by the outer bark and secondary phloem, and we hypothesized that the cambium may experience suf...

Pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC, EC 4.1.1.1) and alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH, EC 1.1.1.1) are responsible for the anaerobic production of acetaldehyde and ethanol in higher plants. In developing soybean embryos, ADH activity increased upon imbibition and then declined exponentially with development, and was undetectable in leaves by 30 days after imbibi...

When the Bluegrass region of Kentucky was settled, early farmers found natural woodland pastures of open-grown trees shading grass and cane. The same trees that shaded the natural pastures remain with us today, many of them between three hundred and five hundred years old. The horse and livestock farms that make the Bluegrass famous are shaded by t...

The Snapshot: Climate issue of Southern Cultures includes photography and reflections on climate impacts across the southern states by Jenny Adler, Austin Anthony, Kate Auger, Arden Barnes, Monica Patrice Barra, Robin Boggs, Jared Bramblett, Lily Brooks, Hannah Brown, Becca Burton, Matthew Busch, Gordon Campbell, Natalie Chanin, Vanessa Charlot, Wa...

It is difficult to know the age of a tree. Size and age are not closely related, and it is possible for a small tree on a poor site to be much older than a large tree of the same species on a better site. The only accurate way to measure tree age is to count the annual rings that temperate trees make. This is done by taking a pencil-size core of a...

Lexington Cemetery was created in 1849 within a woodland pasture of ancient trees, and most of those trees still provide shade and comfort. The rural cemetery movement, which changed graveyards into attractive, landscaped parks, began in 1831, and the Lexington Cemetery was one of the first to use an existing stand of trees to provide shade and sol...

The striking scenery of the Bluegrass—gently rolling pastures with plank fences, elegant estate houses, horses, and woodland pastures of huge, old tree—is unique. The ecological region of the Bluegrass is defined by its deep beds of limestone in the Inner and Outer Bluegrass, and interbedded shale and limestone in the Hills of the Bluegrass. The fr...

The late nineteenth century saw the rise of public parks in cities. Boston Common and New York’s Central Park became the models for urban public spaces and access to nature within crowded cities. Southern cities were slower to recognize the importance of public parks, and finding land within urban areas for park development was difficult. In Lexing...

The Nashville Basin is a limestone karst region with geologic and topographic similarities to the Bluegrass. The Inner Nashville Basin has much thinner soils than the Inner Bluegrass. There is a large number of ancient trees, especially bur oak and chinkapin oak, scattered throughout the Inner Basin, evidence of past woodland pastures. In the Outer...

Woodland pastures are fast disappearing as the trees get old and are affected by development and management practices. A concerted effort is needed to replace these trees with seedlings raised from locally collected seeds. The horticultural method of narrowing the genetic base of trees by cloning is undesirable, and we should take a forestry approa...

The threatened loss of a venerable tree can provoke anger and action in people. One such tree is the Old Schoolhouse Oak. After being threatened with destruction by development in 2008, the tree was saved by citizen action, extensive news coverage, and a commitment to good care on the part of the developer. This kind of community involvement is cri...

Elmwood Stock Farm is an organic farm in Scott County, Kentucky, that raises cattle and sheep as well as organic vegetables. Long before Kentucky became famous for its horses, the Bluegrass was known for cattle and sheep. In 1942 there were over 1 million sheep in the state, nearly all of them in the Bluegrass. The same trees that shaded its pastur...

This chapter defines venerable trees through the introduction of two ancient trees, one at a temple in Indonesia and one in a graveyard in Kentucky. Venerable trees are defined as old or otherwise significant trees to which people have reverential and emotional connections. The chapter describes the author’s long-term personal connection to trees a...

There are five tree species that are long-lived and characteristic of the woodland pasture habitat of the Bluegrass. The same individual trees present in 1779 are still here today. These are bur oak, chinkapin oak, Shumard oak, blue ash, and kingnut. Kingnut is also called shellbark hickory. Hybrid red oaks are common and it is often difficult to a...

The St. Joe Oak is a huge bur oak that stands alone in the middle of a parking structure, saved from destruction by citizen activism. The huge old trees of the Bluegrass are disappearing, victims of age, poor management, and development. By one estimate, more than 90 percent of the bur oaks of Fayette County have disappeared in the last sixty years...

As towns and cities grew, farms with woodland pastures were developed into housing and shopping areas. A few trees of the original woodland pastures remain. The area of Coldstream Farm has lost nearly all its original woodland pasture except for one surrounding a hotel. Remnant trees are scattered throughout the area, indicating that the original w...

Woodland pastures, or wood pastures, are a common landscape feature in Europe. These pastures date to medieval times or earlier, and they may have been created by natural forces rather than by farmers. This chapter compares the grazing animals of Europe and North America and the modern woodland pastures of Europe with those of the Bluegrass and Nas...

Sex in trees is complicated. Unable to move, trees rely on wind and animals to reproduce successfully. This chapter focuses on reproduction in kingnut trees and wind pollination. Once trees have made seeds, they need means to move those seeds around the landscape. Trees like blue ash, with its small winged seeds, rely on wind, but trees like kingnu...

A huge bur oak in Fayette County once stood on the edge of an estate near downtown Lexington. The tree was there when the main road was a buffalo trace and remains today. This chapter recounts what is known about the Bluegrass just before permanent settlement in 1779. Drought and bison played a major role in creation of the woodland pasture habitat...

Vascular plants have respiring tissues which are perfused by the transpiration stream, allowing solubilization of respiratory CO2 in the xylem sap. The transpiration stream could provide a conduit for the internal delivery of respiratory CO2 to leaves. Trees have large amounts of respiring tissues in the root systems and stems, and may have elevate...

Acetaldehyde and ethanol are usually thought to be produced in plant tissues as a mechanism to tolerate hypoxic conditions. We have found acetaldehyde and ethanol to be common in the vascular cambium and in the transpiration stream of trees. In nonflooded trees, acetaldehyde and ethanol concentrations averaged 130 and 40 μM in the cambium and 130 a...

Vascular plants have respiring tissues which are perfused by the transpiration stream, allowing solubilization of respiratory CO2 in the xylem sap. The transpiration stream could provide a conduit for the internal delivery of respiratory CO2 to leaves. Trees have large amounts of respiring tissues in the root systems and stems, and may have elevate...

Ethanol has previously been shown to be present in the xylem sap of flooded and nonflooded trees. Because of the constitutive presence of alcohol dehydrogenase in the mature leaves of woody plants, we hypothesized that the leaves and shoots of trees had the ability to metabolize ethanol supplied by the transpiration stream. 1-[14C]Ethanol was suppl...

Alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) is an enzyme that plays a central role in the anaerobic metabolism of plants. In herbaceous and woody plants, ADH activity occurs in root apices and in germinating seeds. In trees, ADH activity also occurs in leaves and in stems, and it is particularly high in the vascular cambium, a site of ethanol synthesis. We are inv...

he twolined chestnut borer, Agrilus bilineatus (Weber) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), attacks oaks (Quercus spp.) that have been weakened by prior environmental or biotic stress. Our earlier work showed that trees with relatively low winter starch reserves are more likely to be attacked by A. bilineatus the following summer. We hypothesized that such t...

Ethanol is present in the transpiration stream of flooded and unflooded trees in concentrations up to 0.5mM. Transpired ethanol does not evaporate but is remetabolized by foliage and upper stems in Populus deltoides. {sup 14}C-ethanol was supplied in the transpiration stream to excised leaves and shoots; more than 98% was incorporated. Less than 1%...

Results of recent experiments indicate an internal cycling of respiratory CO{sub 2} in woody plants. The CO{sub 2} concentration of xylem sap expressed from the twigs of field grown Populus deltoides ranged from .14 to .50 mM. The pH of the xylem sap was 5.7 to 6.7, providing a significant bicarbonate concentration in many samples. Total dissolved...

Chestnut blight fungus, Cryphonectria (Endothia) parasitica, causes bark and wood deformity to the lower bole of scarlet oak, Quercus coccinea L., but does not kill the tree. We tested the hypothesis that C. parasitica infection stresses the tree and predisposes it to attack by the twolined chestnut borer, Agrilus bilineatus (Weber). Scarlet oaks w...

Canopy-tree mortality was assessed from 1985 through 1987 at Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky. Red oaks, predominantly scarlet oak and black oak, experienced the greatest mortality followed by hickories, white oak, and chestnut oak. Mortality was concentrated in mixed red and white oak stands on relatively xeric mid- or upper-slope positions. Mo...

Response of the southern red mite, Oligonychus ilicis McGregor, to young and one year old leaves of Ilex opaca Aiton was studied on three dates during the period of leaf expansion in the spring. Young foliage, which is rich in nutrients but also contains high levels of saponins, was found to be unsuitable for colonization by this oligophagous herbi...

We measured the frequency with which leaves of trees in the Ohio River Valley produced ethanol aerobically, to determine if aerobic ethanol production might provide a viable field assay for air pollution stress. Leaves were collected from trees during the summers of 1985 and 1986 and ethanol production was determined using headspace GC. Frequency o...

Although spinose teeth of holly leaves have been widely cited as an example of a physical defense against herbivores, this assumption is based largely on circumstantial evidence and on general misinterpretation of a single, earlier experiment. We studied the response of third and fifth instar larvae of the fall webworm, Hyphantria cunea Drury, a ge...

The twolined chestnut borer, Agrilus bilineatus (Weber) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), attacks oaks (Quercus spp.) and is associated with extensive mortality of trees in the eastern deciduous forests of North America. We tested the hypothesis that winter starch reserves of oak roots are an indicator of tree vigor and that only trees low in stored starc...

The chemical constituency of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida L.) and red maple (Acer rubrum L.) foliage was analyzed over a species compositional gradient to test the hypothesis that over subtle gradients of moisture and nutrient availability production of phenolic compounds will be increased on sites of greatest stress. Calcium and nitrogen conc...

Many folivorous insects are selective feeders which consume specific leaf tissues. For specialist herbivores feeding on plants of overall low nutritional quality, selective feeding may allow consumption of a high quality resource. Selective feeding may also allow insects to avoid structural or allelochemical defenses. We examined the structure and...

The twolined chestnut borer, Agrilus bilineatus (Weber) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is associated with mortality of stressed oaks in the eastern deciduous forests of North America. Beetles were attracted to stressed trees within hours of the onset of stress. We hypothesized that adult beetles rapidly locate suitable hosts by olfactory detection of t...

The twolined chestnut borer, Agrilus bilineatus (Weber) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), attacks stressed oaks (Quercus spp.) and is associated with extensive mortality of trees in the eastern deciduous forests of North America. We examined host location by the insect and subsequent host mortality in experimentally stressed trees. A. bilineatus adults we...

Phytomyza ilicicola (Diptera: Agromyzidae), a univoltine specialist leafminer, is one of the few insect herbivores of American holly. Adult emergence is closely synchronized with leaf flush in spring, and females make numerous feeding punctures on and oviposit in new leaves. Larvae hatch in late May and June, but their feeding period and developmen...

Plants of five clones of Populus tremuloides Michx. were exposed to 0, 0.2 or 0.5 microliter per liter SO(2) for 8 hours in controlled environment chambers. In the absence of the pollutant, two pollution-resistant clones maintained consistently lower daytime diffusive conductance (LDC) than did a highly susceptible clone or two moderately resistant...

Plants of five clones of Populus tremuloides Michx. were exposed to 0, 0.2 or 0.5 microliter per liter SO/sub 2/ for 8 hours in controlled environment chambers. In the absence of the pollutant, two pollution-resistant clones maintained consistently lower daytime diffusive conductance (LDC) than did a highly susceptible clone or two moderately resis...

Normal rat liver lysosomes were isolated by the technique of loading with Triton WR-1339. Purity of the preparation was monitored with marker enzymes; a high enrichment in acid hydrolases was obtained in the tritosome fraction. In 0.0145 M NaCl, 4.5% sorbitol, 0.6 mM NaHCO(3), pH 7.2 at 25 degrees C the tritosomes had an electrophoretic mobility of...

FIDLER1 has described melanoma cell lines produced by serial injection into and collection from C57 mice, some lines of which produce few pulmonary metastases while others have greatly increased metastatic potential. These cells also grow in culture and retain their respective metastatic or non-metastatic character1,2. These cell lines are particul...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-220). Photocopy. s