Boophone

[Diane Whitehead]

Boophone is the favourite bulb of molly.malecki@gmail.com 

-I have a few puny seedlings,  but here's as good as it gets: a photo below from my trip this fall to South Africa.  

Here I am standing over a massive clump of B. haemanthoides with the foliage munched down, holding a spent inflorescence I found nearby.  This was growing in a field not far from Kleinsee, just inland from the Atlantic coast of Namaqualand, in almost pure sand.

Best,

Molly

[Arnold]

Hi Diane

Does this shoot the common conception that the Boophone are poisonous?

[Diane Whitehead]

The PBS wiki has this to say:  Boophone is derived from bous = ox, phonos = slaughter (the bulb sap is extremely poisonous). 

I don't know whether the leaves are poisonous as well.

[Anonymized User]

The leaves are devoured by a red chunky grasshopper (I always thought it was a locust as it is rather large - two to three inches long) - I think it's called a red and black foaming grasshopper. It accumulates the toxins and secretes them from behind the thorax as a brown foam. If you have ever smelled Melianthus major foliage the smell is identical! We have them in our garden and it's a constant mission to catch and relocate them - I use kitchen tongs - they will destroy Clivia, Crinum etc in a day.
We adopted a young Africanis and she has a prey drive second to none - anything that moves is prey! She used to catch and maul them. After about the tenth victim she was retching uncontrollably. When she sees them now she barks incessantly so that I investigate and remove them. If not she paws them until they are disabled

But those are babies! I have seen clumps of bulbs north of Kleinsee on the plain between Brand se Baai and Koekenaap where the individual bulbs were 40cm in diameter! They were growing with gigantic Euphorbia tuberculata that were a habitat themselves for all manner of lizards, snakes and invertebrates. A beautiful stunning habitat that is luckily protected now as it is in the envelope of a wind turbine farm.

It's one of those places that creeps into your very being. You can't escape the feeling of ancient. It speaks to you in so many ways.
Whilst conducting search and rescue of all geophytes and succulents for the Sere Wind farm I was fortunate to be there for two successive growing seasons. Something that will always stay with me is a sense of connection with not only the landscape but the ancient people that inhabited it.
During operations we found a previously undocumented shell midden. Apart from the usual remains of shellfish shells and broken ostrich eggs, tortoise carapaces and the who's who of bones there was a stone. Not a discarded stone tool but a beautiful elliptical flattened stone - clearly polished by wave action - that was unlike anything I had seen around there. It was a rich copper brown with darker spots. It was singularly beautiful and lay in stark contrast to the bleached discards of the daily struggle. I kept it. It always reminds me that people are people. I always imagine someone being captivated by it and despite having to slog a considerable distance up a steep slope carrying a heavy bag of essential food to their camp, this object was beautiful and a treasure.

[Anonymized User]

Here's the grasshopper. I must say ours are more red than black though and excrete brown foam.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyophorus_spumans

[Arnold]

It's always been a mystery to me how some plant material is toxic to one species and innocuous to other.

Chocolate to dogs
Onions to horses
Colchicums to slugs
poison ivy which creates a serious rash in humans and deer eat it like arugula.

[MarkMazer]

poison ivy which creates a serious rash in humans

FWIW: Not all humans are allergic to the urushiol in poison ivy. I'm one of the fortunate ones.

[CG100]

It's always been a mystery to me how some plant material is toxic to one species and innocuous to other.

Mostly it is just a quirk of genetics, what a digestive, or other system, has evolved with.

Humans are one of the very few animals that can safely eat avocado.
A common wormer for dogs - avamectin, a secretion of some moulds - is toxic to a few breeds (such as dalmatians) as they lack a particular enzyme.
Some protective chemicals in plants are enjoyed by some animals - the characteritic flavours in brassicas are insect repellants.
No snake really wants to kill a human, but unluckily for us, many can hit you with a bite that delivers enough toxins to kill you many times over.
Many caucasians retain an ability to digest lactose into adulthood, but very many races do not - dairy food are not popular in the Far East, and elsewhere.
My father was untroubled by stinging nettles (something that I did not inherit, unfortunately).
Capsaicin is loved by many humans, and you can certainly become progressively immune to it to some degree. It has no effect on many, if not all, birds.

[Anonymized User]

It's always been a mystery to me how some plant material is toxic to one species and innocuous to other.

Mostly it is just a quirk of genetics, what a digestive, or other system, has evolved with.

Humans are one of the very few animals that can safely eat avocado.
A common wormer for dogs - avamectin, a secretion of some moulds - is toxic to a few breeds (such as dalmatians) as they lack a particular enzyme.
Some protective chemicals in plants are enjoyed by some animals - the characteritic flavours in brassicas are insect repellants.
No snake really wants to kill a human, but unluckily for us, many can hit you with a bite that delivers enough toxins to kill you many times over.
Many caucasians retain an ability to digest lactose into adulthood, but very many races do not - dairy food are not popular in the Far East, and elsewhere.
My father was untroubled by stinging nettles (something that I did not inherit, unfortunately).
Capsaicin is loved by many humans, and you can certainly become progressively immune to it to some degree. It has no effect on many, if not all, birds.

Birds do not have receptors for capsaicin. Capsicum is distributed by mostly frugivorous birds although opportunists are definitely involved as well.
The seeds of Capsicum are not able to withstand chewing, hence Capsaicin being irritant to mammals - to the point that you will vomit if you consume large quantities thereof.

[CG100]

Birds do not have receptors for capsaicin. Capsicum is distributed by mostly frugivorous birds although opportunists are definitely involved as well.
The seeds of Capsicum are not able to withstand chewing, hence Capsaicin being irritant to mammals - to the point that you will vomit if you consume large quantities thereof.

Humans have no receptor for capsaicin either, as such - the same recptors as detect physical heat also react to capsaicin.

Many, many people become tolerant of capsaicin too. Many moons ago I would eat at an Asian restaurant at least once a week, and often twice, and what I ordered changed over time, although I prefer the actual flavour of chilli to massive heat. There are also lots of chilli eating contests, principally in the US.

[Anonymized User]

Humans have a capsaicin receptor known as the Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) receptor:

That's why it burns

[CG100]

Humans have a capsaicin receptor known as the Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) receptor:

That's why it burns

If you check things out, the primary function of TRPV1 is heat/pain detection. I would suggest that happened/evolved a LOOOOOONG while before humans found capsaisin.

I recall the discovery being published in New Scientist, a very long time ago. It was especially interesting in that the heat of capsaisin is experienced as if it was actual, physical heat.