02.05 – How Plants Poop

Episode description:

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But that rose would still have to poop. Well, sort of. While we might not think of plants as producing poop, they’re not free of the inefficiencies of a metabolic life. In the green world, life is anything but easy in, easy out, and in this episode, we’ll look at the many ways that plants “poop” or at least how they deal with the things they’d rather not leave lying around. This is the Single Acorn Podscat.

WORKS CITED

• Sloth pooping (video)
• Carbon-fixing enzyme (rubisco) 10 times more abundant than previously thought (source)
• Basics of photosynthesis by Bozeman Science (video)
• The Effect of Oxygen Concentration on Photosynthesis in Higher Plants (source)
• Episode 02.04 – Scent Marking (link)
• Use of olfaction in Northern Brown Kiwi, Apteryx mantelli (source)
• Earth’s oxygen cycle and the evolution of animal life (source)
• The Great Oxidation Event (source)
• The Great Oxidation Event expanded the genetic repertoire of arsenic metabolism and cycling (source)
• C4 pathway (video)
• Oxygen levels and the rise of fire (source)
• Map of purslane distribution (iNaturalist)
• Guttation in Hemp Nettle (source)
• Life cycle of a trout lily (link)
• From waste products to ecochemicals: Fifty years research of plant secondary metabolism  (source)
• The salt glands of some mangrove plants remove excess salt using ion transporters that help create a concentrated sodium solution (link)
• Making Plants Break a Sweat: the Structure, Function, and Evolution of Plant Salt Glands (source)
• The Salt-Secreting Gland of Marine Birds (source)
• Right Tree – Right Place White Pine and Salt hite Pine and Salt hite Pine and Salt Tolerance (source)