Elsewhere on the Web -- Karma Police Edition

Things of interest from the internet:

1) I sort of already suspected that imidacloprid is not particularly good for the environment, but had avoided reading much on the subject because I didn't want to have to stop using the only thing I've got that seems to work. And then The Raw Story published an article about imidacloprid in water being linked to lower populations of snails, dragonflies, and other invertebrates. I don't really care about the snails so much, because what have snails done for me lately, but I would hate to be responsible for hurting any dragonflies. I mean, they eat mosquitoes. They're on our side. We don't want to mess with the dragonflies.

Imidacloprid is also often used in flea and tick control collars for cats and dogs, by the way, so don't think you're in the clear just because you don't use it on your plants.

Honeybee on unidentified cultivar of Bracteantha bracteosa.
2) On the other hand, the danger of imidacloprid to bees has maybe been exaggerated. At the very least, the people who are sure that colony collapse disorder is entirely due to neonicotinoid pesticides are overlooking some things. For one thing, it's been happening for a long time:

It gets even better: in both 2007 and 2009 another paper pointed out that there were at least 18 historical episodes of similar large-scale losses of honey bees dating back to 1869, at least several of which had symptoms similar enough that they cannot be ruled out as being the exact same ailment. Yet, how often have you seen any of the scientists and journalists and beekeepers acknowledging that any theories about the cause of CCD need to accommodate the evidence for similar bee crashes that pre-date neonicotinoid pesticides, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), migratory beekeeping, cell phones, genetically modified crops, or any of the other human-made “causes” that have been run up the proverbial flagpole? (emphasis in original)

Don't misunderstand: neonicotinoids are not doing the bees any favors, and bees would be better off if we stopped using neonicotinoid pesticides. But that's not enough to end colony collapse disorder. More things are happening than just pesticides.

3) Modernfarmer.com has a post called "Searching for OJ's Killer" that's an interesting read, if you've been longing to learn more about citrus greening (huanglongbing) since the last time I mentioned it. Among the things I learned: there's a virus that affects citrus plants that's been named "Tristeza" ("sadness" in Portuguese), which is surely in the running for the most appropriate plant-virus name ever.

Photo from voy-idea.jp.
4) New from the world of unnecessary plastic plant-related crap: The Book Vase. It's not that it's not cute -- it is -- but I look at that and think about how hard it would be to water without accidentally getting the books next to it wet and ruining them. And then I think about how there are no drainage holes. (Though at least in the photo, they're using a plant that can grow in water. The expanded clay pellets instead of potting mix is also a good call.) And then I think of algae. This just seems like more trouble than it could be worth. (Via Colossal.)


5) Finally, lest this post be completely depressing and negative,¹ I found a video I thought was cool. It's a cover of Radiohead's song "Karma Police," as performed by Tel Aviv-based musicians Rotem Shefy (vocalist) and Leat Sabbah (cellist/arranger). It took me a few listens to decide I liked it: it's very different from the original, and in spots I was like, are they parodying Middle Easterners? What's going on here?,² but it grew on me. Also the video is worth watching for the outfits alone, if you're into that sort of thing.


(Via MetaFilter.)

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¹ (This is PATSP, not The Deep Middle.)
² In short: yes, they were, at least partially. From their own description: "A satirical arrangement recorded with an exaggerated Arabic accent," though the Kickstarter page for the video also says "What seemed at first a satirical cover transformed into a full-blown multi-layered middle-eastern arrangement," (emphasis mine) implying that they consider it something else now. This sort of transformation is apparently not uncommon in the music world. The discussion of the song at MetaTalk may also be of interest, if you like to read people arguing about arguing.

Walkaways: Citrus edition

Okay. So there's this disease, called citrus greening or (in Chinese) huanglongbing. It's caused by a bacterium, and spreads between plants via insects (the Asian citrus psyllid or the African citrus psyllid). And it is a big deal.

Plants affected by huanglongbing produce stunted, inedible fruit, and a lot less fruit than usual, so the disease makes plants economically worthless. Then it kills them. Affected plants typically die within 3-5 years after infection. Infected plants can also spread the disease to other plants before they die (if the psyllids are present to transmit the infection between plants), and don't always show symptoms immediately. Huanglongbing is also, at the moment, incurable. So this has some obvious bad implications for the U.S. citrus crop.

I tried pretty hard, but was unable to figure out from the USDA site exactly what products are being quarantined, where cases of citrus greening have actually been reported, or how long the quarantines have been going on. It looks like the first U.S. cases of the disease were in Miami-Dade County, Florida, in 2005, and the disease then spread to basically the entire state by 2008. Citrus fruit itself is not considered able to transmit citrus greening, so the fruit can still be shipped around the U.S., so long as it's been carefully inspected for leaves and stems that could conceivably spread the disease.

Currently, the only thing anybody's really able to do is try to prevent the disease from spreading, by quarantining states in which the disease has been found. There's also increased pesticide use, as people try to pre-emptively wipe out any populations of the psyllid before they manage to spread the disease. Neither of those are great long-term solutions, though.

As for a cure, well, we don't have one yet. They're experimenting with antibacterials like penicillin, so we should have penicillin-resistant huanglongbing bacteria any day now. I don't get the impression that that's been working out terribly well so far. Adding systemic pesticides to affected plants doesn't work so well either.¹ There's a more promising-looking plan to genetically engineer citrus plants with genes from other species (spinach was the one mentioned on the one page I saw), which would render them resistant to the disease and make the whole problem commerically irrelevant.² There have been some promising results from growing guavas in the same fields as the citrus; the theory is that the guavas may produce compounds that confuse the psyllids and leave them unable to locate new citrus plants to infect. There is also a parasitic wasp, which has been introduced in some citrus-growing areas and seems to be potentially useful for keeping psyllids in check. So one way or another, we should have this problem solved eventually. And maybe guavas will suddenly be abundant in the stores as a side benefit.

However, this has caused a few troubles in the tropical plant industry as well. Our supplier, at the garden center where I used to work, is based in Florida. So when the quarantine went up in January 2008, we lost the ability to bring in pretty much anything from the whole citrus family (Rutaceae). So no Citrus, no Fortunella, no Murraya, and that was still the case when I quit working there. Customers didn't like that at all, so the garden center scrambled to find replacements. They got a few citrus plants from California, through the outdoor shrub and perennial suppliers, but not very often, and the ones they did manage to get were often more expensive than the Florida ones had been.

I've also seen citrus a few times at Lowe's, though I assumed that those were probably also from California or Texas.

But the point is, I had more or less given up on seeing anything citrusy in the garden centers up here, and especially anywhere that I knew got most of their plants from Florida. And yet, a month or two ago --

Citrus x meyeri, Meyer lemon.
I'm left scratching my head over what this might mean, though. I'm pretty certain the quarantine on Florida citrus plants hasn't actually ended; the text of the regulations (or what I think must be the relevant text, anyway) is pretty opaque to me. It appears that there are new exceptions made for certain facilities if they're inspected often enough and found to be pest-free on each inspection. And possibly the ultimate destination for the plants is also relevant.

Citrus aurantifolia (lime)? It was identified as a lime, but there turn out to be a lot of different species called limes, and I don't know which one this is.
It's hard to see how citrus greening could get much of a foothold in Iowa, for example, even if somebody screwed up and sent infected Floridian plants here. There aren't that many susceptible plants in the first place, the plants we do have don't generally stay close enough to one another to transmit diseases, and the odds of transporting the psyllid and an infected plant at the same time, and having them wind up in the same place, seems like a long shot. On the other hand, people do move south from Iowa, all the time. So I just hope the USDA knows what they're doing.

Citrus x meyeri (mis-saved as C. aurantifolia; ignore the file name)
In any case, it's nice to have them around again. I don't have any particular desire to own one, and couldn't afford the money or space for one even if I did, but considering that I never expected to see them for sale again at the ex-job, this was a pleasant surprise all the same. And it's also nice to have a chance to smell the blossoms again -- Murraya paniculata is similar, but it's not the same.

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¹ Not for the reason you might think. Remember, if a plant has huanglongbing, it's not going to be producing usable fruit in the first place, so nobody's going to be eating the fruits that are full of insecticide. The depressing truth is that the imidacloprid doesn't work fast enough to kill the psyllids before they jump to another tree, so it doesn't actually stop the problem.
² Though if you've got a citrus tree growing in your backyard, you'd still be totally boned. I imagine regular citizens aren't going to be able to get the transgenic trees.